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Building Link Popularity
Many search engines are starting to place relevancy of sites based in part on link popularity. The presumed robotic reasoning here is that the more sites you have linking to your site, the more valuable the content on your site must be and therefore, the more relevant. Nowadays, link popularity algorithms even go a step further and consider the link popularity of each originating page, meaning that when a highly-popular page points to another page, it makes the target page popular too. What does this mean for you? It means that the more links there are pointing to your web site, the more popular your site is perceived to be, the higher you'll rank with the search engines. That is, assuming that the links to your site are quality links - relevant to your site's content. Lots of incoming links also means lots of incoming traffic, whether referred by the search engines or not. So should you work on building you site's link popularity? You betcha! But not without a game plan. The most important thing to remember is that quality is more important than quantity. Rather than linking with everybody and their brother, you're better off forming strategic alliances with just a few select sites. Your Web site "real estate" is limited so that's really all you have room for. You don't want to ruin the selling effectiveness of your own web site by adding too many offside links, but you can get excellent results with a select few.
Some Links are Better Than Others Some factors you should consider when assessing the value of a particular link are:
Themed Reciprocal Links Reciprocal links, used properly, do increase your search engine positioning. The key phrase here, however, is... used properly. Your aim in generating reciprocal links should be to create a truly helpful Web resource or Link Directory. You should only request links from Webmasters whose site themes are consistent with or closely related to the theme of your Website. Tightly themed Link Directories get high ratings from search engine robots, but only if they are true resources of organized knowledge. Search engines are getting very smart in their query result rankings. They now include all kinds of advanced calculations pertaining to how links point to you and away from you. They can include keywords in their algorithms to determine how tightly linked your themes and subjects are, so you shouldn’t try to fool them into better positioning by including a lot of Websites that are outside your site’s central subject matter. It all comes down to those crucial keywords again. Even better than tightly themed reciprocal links are tightly themed reciprocal links including appropriate keywords.
So, now that we know that tightly themed reciprocal links are currently in vogue, how does one go about getting them? One way is simply to ask for them.
General Guidelines for Requesting Reciprocal Links 1. First and foremost, you have to establish yourself in the online marketplace as someone to be reckoned with and, of course, have a site well worth linking to. Concentrate on building quality content on your site, so that other webmasters will have a reason to link to you or seek you out with exchange offers. 2. Then, unless you already have many sites in mind you want to link to, head on over to your favorite search engine and enter in keywords that describe your site or sites that you would like to link to. When the results come up, click onto the sites that sound interesting and take a good look around. 3. If you like what you see when you visit a site, check to see whether the Webmaster already has a links page. If you cannot find one, the odds of your getting a receptive response to your link request are probably slim. Still, it never hurts to ask. 4. When you're satisfied that the sites you have visited are of high quality and are consistent with the theme of your Web site, sit down and write each Webmaster a personalized email. You should be able to find the contact information for each site owner on their home or index page. 5. Do NOT commercialize your message in any way. If your email sounds at all like a sales pitch, its a sure bet the recipient will toss it. The only link you should include is one back to your site in your signature file, so your recipient can take a look at your site. 6. In your e-mail start off by complementing the Webmaster’s site, relating unique information about it’s layout or content (so he/she will be hard pressed to consider your e-mail spam). Keep your request short and to the point - no long winded explanations are necessary. 7. If you’re writing to many different Webmasters, make sure that each message you send is fresh, original and utterly appropriate to each particular Web site. Emphasize how linking to your site is going to benefit their visitors. Focus on how, by linking to you, their visitors are going to view them as an even greater resource. 8. Do NOT use “Let’s Trade Links” in the subject line of your message. Use each Webmaster’s name and a personalized comment - or better yet, put their URL in the subject line. There is nothing that catches a webmaster's eye like an email with their own URL in the subject. 9. Be persistent - but only up to a point! If you receive no response to your first offer, you might try sending another e-mail and upping the ante of your proposal. Instead of simply asking for to link to you, offer to exchange links (as long as it's clearly a win-win situation for both of you). You might also try calling people directly. 10. If you don’t receive a reply to your second communication, do not ask again. You’ll have your answer and any more emailing might well be considered spam. Your success with this strategy will depend primarily on the quality of your web site, and your ability to target those webmasters who are most likely to reciprocate with you. Remember, the word reciprocate implies a mutually-beneficial relationship. If you're thinking that this all sounds like a lot of work, you're right. It is. But if you get quality links back to your site it's worth the effort. Of course, there is a far easier way to accomplish the same thing. If you're seriously interested in building your link popularity the right way, one terrific tool that will provide all the help you need is Zeus Automatic Reciprocal Link Generator and Link Directory Creator.
Several other excellent link building software tools and services include:
Other Ways to Get Linked In addition to swapping or exchange links with other non-competitive, but similar subject sites, you can try the following strategies: 1. If your Website is one of value to other webmasters (rich in relevant content), simply add a “Link to Us” page to your site and post the suggestion on all your top pages. Make sure you include a variety of linking options, and provide explicit instructions on how your visitors can implement those options. (You can also offer links to your site in exchange for free advertising or as contest entry incentives).2. Use “viral marketing” strategies. Give away valuable, content-rich informational products, such as your own eBooks. In the case of eBooks, other webmasters will not only post these products at their Websites, they will also offer them to the visitors of their sites, who will offer them to their site’s visitors, and so on and so on. If your eBook contains links back to your site, which it should, your address will be spread, like a virus, all over the Web without your having to lift a finger or pay a cent! 3. Same thing with your articles. Webmasters are always looking for free content. Supply it to them, making sure to include a link back to your site in the resource box at the end of each article. Every article posted will garner you a link back from whatever site is doing the posting! In this way, you’re helping others as well as yourself. And this is a great way to build your credentials and credibility as well as bolstering your site’s popularity with both the public and the search engines! 4. Create a link-worthy article archives (like the one on this site!). If you have written or collected a number of ezine articles, you could create an article section on your site for other Webmasters to link to. If your articles contain a lot of useful information and are organized effectively, your article archive or sections of it could become a real draw for other Webmasters as a way to help and inform their prospects. 5. Here's another way to benefit from digitally delivered products. Create your own free, downloadable e-book or software tool and list it at every shareware, freeware and ebook directory you can find. Most will link directly to the downloadable file, but many will also add a free permanent link to the product page on your site. 6. Use freeware or CGI programs to provide free services or attractions at your site that will entice visitors to want to revisit or link back to you. You might offer free search engine submissions, classified advertising, polling, discussion boards, chat rooms, contests and so on - anything that will make your site a popular place to link to. 7. Participate in link list exchange services, where you agree to add a link list page on your site, while other participants add a page with links to you in exchange. These exchange services work well as long as they are not easily identifiable, although they are not without controversy. As you might expect they do not sit well with search engines, especially those that base a large part of their relevancy rankings on link popularity. 8. Join Link Popularity Programs. Run mostly by search engine optimization specialists, these programs allow you to trade links with other sites for the specific purpose of increasing link popularity. When you join you'll receive a list of new Web pages that contain links to other sites. You must upload these links to your own server and submit the pages to the search engines. At the same time as you are doing this, hundreds of other Webmasters are doing the same thing for you. A few of the better link popularity programs include: Link Topper & Links To You. (These services were popular for a while, but by now the search engines have caught onto this type of contrived inflation of link popularity and most ignore (and may even penalize you) for using such services. So, if you're going to use them, you may be doing so at your own risk.) 9. Join a Web Ring. Web rings go a step further than link exchanges by linking "networks" of related sites. When you join you'll get a small piece of html code to include on your site. A visitor clicking on that code or on a similar link on other participating sites, will be taken to the site that is queued in the ring. If you're going to go this route, make sure that the ring you join is consistent with the image you want to promote. If this sounds like something you'd like to participate in, head on over to Yahoo! WebRing, where you can either join an existing ring or create one of your own!10. When posting on message boards and at other discussion areas, include a signature to your posts along with a link back to your site. Message board threads are not typically indexed by the search engines, but sometimes they are. If nothing else, you might get a bit more traffic to your site. 11. Start your own affiliate program and pay (a percentage of sales) for other sites to link to you. This is the ultimate win-win linking strategy. You benefit by having others link to your site and sell your products and services, and your affiliates benefit by earning cold, hard cash! With all the software and affiliate services readily available its relatively easy to set up and run an affiliate program and it could do wonders for your bottom line. (A word of caution, however. Do not attempt to set up an affiliate program until you have a proven site that sells and a strong sales record. This is not something you should do right off the bat!) 12. Lastly, the fastest and simplest, if no longer a really worthwhile way to build lots of links to your site is to simply submit to FFA sites. Since this form of promotion has fallen by the wayside, I didn't even include any FFA resources in this series of tutorials, but if you feel you would like to cover all the bases there is certainly no harm in using one of the following automated submitters to blast your ad to thousands of these harmless sites.
Award Site Links Talk about going from the ridiculous to the sublime! One terrific linking strategy that is oven overlooked is hooking up with Award Sites. There are hundreds of these online that offer awards for Web design and content, no matter what your skill level. So, if you think you have a darn good site, go ahead and apply. You'll find a listing of some of the top award sites at our http://www.topping-the-lists.com site. If your looking for award links specific to your site's theme or content, you can head on over to http://www.awardsites.com to find a more comprehensive listing. Not only will winning some awards boost your link popularity (as the award sites will link back to you), but you'll get hits (traffic) from the sites giving you the awards. When all is said and done, the best way to get links back to your site is to develop a high quality, content-rich website. Then build your link popularity one link at a time.
Link Popularity Checking Services These services are essential for two reasons: 1) You want to keep an eye on whether the Webmasters with whom you have reciprocal link arrangements are indeed keeping up with their part of the bargain; and 2) You might want to check to see how popular web sites you're thinking of linking with really are. Several search engines also enable you to check your link popularity. Simply go to:
You'll also need to keep an eye on your site's referrer logs, so you can see at a glance how much traffic you're getting from your reciprocal links. Remember - no matter what type of arrangement you've worked out, each party needs to benefit approximately equally for the relationship to last. If you see that someone is only sending you 1 visitor per day and you know you're sending them at least 20, that's selling yourself short. |
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