Web Content Editor

by Abi Noah

As an internet marketer, the temptation is strong to buy backlinks to improve your website’s position in the search engine results pages.

And with directories offering ‘deals’ like £1 a link, no wonder you are tempted.

But before you jump in, lets take a closer look at how effective bought links are.

There is no doubt that backlinks to your website are important in building popularity for your webpages. The backlinks bring both direct human visitors and visitors from the search engines.

But what you want are links that are generated naturally either through article submissions, other webmasters naturally linking to you because of great content or perhaps through viral products you have online.

Here are a few reasons why buying links is not such a good idea:

• Value for Money? If you think about it, good search engine results page position is achieved by having LOTS of backlinks from a WIDE VARIETY of sites pointing back to your site using the appropriate anchor text. So how many backlinks do you have to buy from the different sites to make a difference to your search engine ranking. So many, you will soon be out of pocket. So is it really value for money buying backlinks? I think not
• Quality of links. We all know that the best links are from within the content of another page on a relevant topic using an anchor text. Ideally the page that has the backlinks to your website on it should not contain any other outgoing links, maximizing the amount of PR juice your website gets from the linking website.With bought links your link tends to be put on a page that had a whole load of other links thereby reducing the boost you would get from your link. Also you cannot guarantee that the link will be placed on a page with niche specific content on it
• The Google Penalty. Google prides itself in providing the most up to date and relevant results for any query. It is to ensure this that Google has it’s very complex but effective search engine ranking algorithm. By buying links, you are artificially improving your ranking in the search engines thereby rendering the results inaccurate. The forums are full of comments by webmasters who have been penalized by the search engines on account of bought and sold links. This penalty is mainly in the form of loss of search engine results page position

Really, the best way to go about generating backlinks to your niche specific site or forums is to have unique useful content on your webpages that other webmasters will want to link to naturally

About the Author

Affiliate Marketing Tips for newbies at http://www.affiliatemarketingintro.com

By Andy Follin

Let’s take it for granted that:

a. You want to be top of the search engine results

b. You understand about on-page optimization

c. Your website is up and running and indexed

Now what? How do you take your site from the middle of the pile and push and pull it slowly to the promised land of the top 5 positions?

And slowly here is the key. If you want short-term, quick-profit solutions (in other words ‘black hat’ techniques) you may as well stop reading now. I’m talking about long term investment into the future of your website and business.

And if you want to know how to rank number 1 in Google for your business name or a 10 word phrase that absolutely no-one else would want to rank for, then you need to go away and get some very basic SEO grounding.

What I want to discuss is out-performing your competitors on the absolutely top-notch make-you-a-fortune keywords that bring laser-targeted traffic. In other words, the ones you’re only dreaming about ranking for!

Enough pre-amble; how do we do it?

Simple, really - we stand on the shoulders of giants. In other words, we look at what successful websites do and have done - and we use that information. No, we’re not going to re-invent the wheel and copy others’ business models, we’re going to take the cream from their hard work and pour it onto our sites!

Ranking in Google is about two things - it’s about relevance and it’s about popularity. We’ll assume that our sites are relevant to the traffic we’re seeking - no point attracting shoe shoppers if we’re selling ice cream! So it’s about popularity. And in Google’s case, that means backlinks. Put simply, the better the links to your site, the more they’ll see you as being popular, and the more they’ll pull your site to the top of the results.

Notice I said ‘better’, not ‘more’. In this case, quality is far more important than quantity. I can give you examples of sites with 300,000 inbound links that are far outranked by sites with 2000.

SEO experts talk about ranking number 1 in Google rather than Yahoo or MSN simply because Google is the search engine that most searchers use. Ironically, though, we need to use Yahoo to get to number one in Google. This is because Google is really bad at showing inbound links.

Yahoo Site Explorer (siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com) is far better at this. YSE will show you which sites link to your competitors. And better still, they’ll rank them in terms of importance, so all the hard work’s done for you!

You just need to type in the URL of the site into the SEARCH box at the top of the screen, click on ‘Explore URL’, then click on ‘Inlinks’ and select ‘Except from this domain’ in the drop-down box. Lo-and-behold - a list of your competitor’s most important links. Not bad, eh?

So here’s your strategy:

First, draw up your list of must-have, top-drawer keywords and keyword phrases.

Second, search Google for them and take a note of the top 10 websites for each.

Third, examine each of the top 10 in YSE and see where the important links are coming from.

Fourth, filter these links into three categories: 1, the sites you won’t get links from; 2, the sites you’ll get links from with some hard work; 3, the sites you can get links from straight away (these can include blogs that allow comments, directories, article sites etc)

Fifth, get to work on acquiring links from the third category, then move on to the second.

This takes time, obviously, but not as much time as randomly searching for links that you’ll ultimately discover have no importance whatsoever.

If you follow this procedure diligently and methodically, I can guarantee that you’ll soon begin to see your sites slowly but surely marching up to the top of the rankings.

About the Author

Andy Follin is diligently and methodically applying everything he’s learned about SEO in a quest to drive a website to the top of the rankings in the incredibly competitive online casino niche. Only by applying techniques like the ones above can he have any chance of showing in the top 10 for terms such as best online gambling guide, best online casinos, and online casino bonus offers.

By Bruce Williams

A site alone cannot achieve the desired marketing success without using certain website promotion techniques. Link building is an effective way of promoting and publicizing a website in the World Wide Web. There are different types of link building techniques and strategies which could help in getting higher rank in the search engine rankings. Proper selection and their usage help in extended web traffic and higher ranking, thus building brand recognition and greater profit. Let’s have a look at different types of link building techniques used by SEO expert:

1) One-way link building

Here one site gets a link on another website due to the quality and usability purpose and not for the business purpose. The website whose link is posted need not provide exchange link of the site on which it is posted.

2) Reciprocal link building

Another widely used strategy of link building is ‘reciprocal link building’. Here there is link exchange between two websites on one to one basis. But one has to be careful in choosing the reciprocal partners, as fraud webmasters can take undue advantage of it. It is advisable to look out for quality partners and review their requests for links exchange before finalizing.

3) Article submission

Article submission in various articles directories is a sure shot method to build effective link building of your website. You can write one article per day or as much as you want and do directory submission of articles. Submission can be done in many directories altogether, where one-way links are given to your site from the articles. Other sites that use your articles also provide one-way link to your site from other websites.

4) Press release submission

Press release submission in various press release directory and leading news site is a best way to get natural back links from your press release articles. You need to write press release article about your new product launches or news releases in your industry.

5) Triangular OR three way link exchange

Here there is one-way link exchange between three websites. For example- site X gives link to site Y, site Y to site Z and site Z to site X. Thus all three sites have one-way links.

6) Social bookmarking and Social networking

Social bookmarking and social networking is one of the best ways to get back links and more visitors to your website. As per my experience it will send more traffic that will help to increase conversions.

There are many more link building techniques which are useful to increase link popularity of your website. Quality link building is far better than quantity link building, so keep working on quality link building and achieve better search engine rankings.

Plave.com is a leading web service provider company in California. Plaveb services include online marketing, website promotion, web design services, web development services, SEO Consultant and SEO optimization. Contact us for more information and details at plaveb.com

by Niall Buchanan

There are many areas to Search Engine Optimisation, but if you want to rank well on Google then the most important aspect of any SEO campaign is Links and the process of Link building.

This is a lengthy and often frustrating process and it involves many different steps in order to be successful. The key thing to remember is to be patient, it can take over 4 weeks for you to see the benefit of any link building campaign. It can also take longer for people who you have requested links from to get back to you or even add your link. Don’t think that you will do some link building and be T10 on Google in a few weeks.

Reciprocal Links

The first and most debatable way to gain links is by getting what are called reciprocal links. This process involves you placing a link to website A and then them placing a link back to you. Now the debate focuses on how effective this form of links is and weather Google will penalise you for participating in this.

The answer to this is that they are both good and bad, confused? Well basically its kind of like beer, if you drink in moderation its good for you but if you go crazy and indulge too much then its not.

With reciprocal linking it’s okay to have a few links back to your site, as long as they are from relevant sites (see later on) and also that they are more valuable than the link you give out (so they have a higher PR or are from a high quality or authority website). The main thing to remember here is that it’s not all about getting links, it’s about getting more inbound links as a one way links is still far more valuable. But we all need to start somewhere so some reciprocal linking can be useful.

Relevant Links

Relevant links are important to any link building campaign, these help define your site and Google places a higher value on these than non relevant links. So what is a relevant link, well it’s a link that is on the same topic as your website. So if you have a website that sells hotels, then having travel related or accommodation related links are better.

Directories

There are different types of directories on the internet and the two main ones are Free and Paid. These can be great for not only building one way links but also getting good quality links to your website. The two best known directory’s are Yahoo and DMOZ, these have the highest credibility with Google and will give you a quality link back. They do both have their drawbacks though as the DMOZ is free but it can take a long time to get listed and if you have an affiliate website then you have practically no chance of a listing. Yahoo will list your website within a few days but they will charge you a massive $299 for the privilege and that’s not even a guarantee that you will be listed in the directory.

The best thing to do is look at other cheaper quality directories, there are plenty out there my top five are

1. Bubl
2. Greenstalk
3. Botw
4. Iwebtool
5. Aviva

There are some pretty good lists of directories on the net and for both free and paid ones. You could do a Google search for “free directory’s” or “paid directory’s”.

Blogs and Forums

Blogs and forums can be a great for getting links also and also relevant links at that, just type into a search engine “blog” or “forum” and a keyword related to your website and you should find a good selection of relevant blogs and forums.

You can then contribute information to a forum and usually add an anchor texted link to your website as a signature. These can give you high pr backlinks depending on the quality of the forum.

Blogs usually allow you to comment or contribute to them and this again allows you to get a link back to your website. Also starting your own blog can allow you link back to your website.

Finding Relevant Links

The most basic and most time consuming way to find links is by searching the Internet for sites which you can add your site too. There are a few ways to do this, one is to type into a search engine the words “add url” or “add website” and a keyword related to your website. So if you have a books website then type “add url book” as a search.

Another well used method is to find websites that link to your competitors, you can use programs such as IBP or SEO Elite which both cost money. Alternatively you can type link:yourcompetitor.com where you replace your competitor with a website which is in Google top 10 for one of your keywords.

This method can be effective for finding which directories your competitors are using and also you can sometimes find sites which they are paying to list on. The chances are if your competitors is paying for advertising on a site then it is probably worth getting your website listed there too.

Write Articles

A great way of not just getting one way links but also good contextual links as you can write an article on a topic related to your website and add a link within the content where relevant. This method also allows you to add a link back to your website in the author section which will be kept with the article.

The article can then be submitted to various websites which distribute them for you. Basically they give people permission to use you article on their website providing they retain your author information, thus you can gain dozens of links from a single article. Since the sites often are on the same topic as the article meaning that you can often give relevant links back to you site.

The author of this article is Niall Buchanan an internet entrepreneur who runs several travel related affiliate marketing sites such as Rooms in Scotland and Rooms in Inverness