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What is SEO? Search engine optimization explained

SEO stands for “search engine optimization” or “search engine optimizer”.

English folk call it “search engine optimisation”.

If you stop and think about it, it’s an odd phrase because we don’t optimize search engines, we optimize web pages for search engines.

However, hardly anyone talks about web page optimization.

I’d better warn you that, although I earn a good living from affiliate programs as a result of getting free traffic from search engines, I don’t claim to be an expert search engine optimizer.

But I do know where to go for expert information.

What follows is a brief introduction, a rough guide to optimizing web pages so they’ll be found in search engines.

Three things you must learn about SEO

1. The most important thing to understand is that you should take the time to learn SEO skills before you build a web site. SEO is NOT something you tack on afterwards.

Right from the first bit of HTML, the first word you write, you need to have search engine optimization in mind.

If you ignore this warning, you risk owning a site that ranks poorly and you’ll have to do a lot of rejigging to improve it.

A marked exception is if you’re using Site Build It! to build your site. It’s a site-building, site-hosting, site-promoting tool used by thousands of small businesses and affiliates. It allows you to concentrate on creating good content and not worry about the techie stuff. It actually teaches you SEO skills as you build the site.

2. The second most important thing to learn is that search engines look at on-page and off-page factors.

Fiddling endlessly with your site won’t help you at all if no one is linking to your site. You need lots of high quality, relevant links to your site if you want to rank well.

3. Which brings us to the third most important point which, sadly, many people overlook…

Build a useful, interesting site. If you do that, it will be much easier to encourage other sites to link to your site.

Google Community

forums.addurltodirectories.com is a forum which discusses everything related to Google – including AdSense, Gmail, Orkut and SEO.

SEO

10 ways to improve PageRank and search engine rankings

I love this topic because it is hotly debated in every webmaster forum and blog on the planet. There are many different ideas as to what will or will not work and what works on one website does not necessarily work on all websites.

In this article I will go over some of the debated ideas and those that are widely agreed on as well.

First of all I want to point out that Google PageRank and search engine results are not the same thing. You can have a high PageRank and be doing terribly in the search engines for your keywords and phrases. You can be doing well in the search engines, yet have a 0 PageRank.

This is probably the most confusing thing that new webmasters have to learn. It seems that many believe that a high PageRank will get them good results in the search engines.

It is widely agreed that PageRank is part of the algorithm Google uses to rank web pages. However, I believe it isn’t the biggest or most important factor in achieving good results in the Google search engine.

So why does almost everyone chase PageRank and how do you get a high PageRank?

That’s the question everyone seems to be focused on when they should be focused on doing well in the search engines for their keywords and phrases instead. I will go into PageRank first though to answer that question.

Different people chase PageRank for different reasons. Some do it because other webmasters will buy links from them if their PageRank is high. Why would you buy a link on a webpage that has a high PageRank? Because, according to Google watchers and even Google itself, a link to your web page from another web page is like a vote for your page. The more votes you have, the more popularity you have.

Many webmasters take this to mean they need to run out and gather as many links to their page as possible no matter where they come from or how they get them. What you need to realize is that all links do not help you that much. Links from a game website to a real estate website help you very little even if the game website has a high PageRank. Not many gamers out there are hunting for real estate, so the traffic you get would not be relevant either.

Links from a web page that displays news about real estate would be relevant to your topic so you would want a link or “vote” from it. If that real estate news website also had a high PageRank and a lot of traffic you would benefit even more. The web page that links to you transfers a small percentage of its own PageRank to your web page through linking to it. So the higher the PageRank the more it has to transfer to your page.

Another factor that determines how important the link or “vote” is to your web page is the number of outbound links are on the page which links to you.

In other words, if the real estate news web page had a PageRank of 8, but linked out to 100 other web pages, it might not help you as much as a web page that had a PageRank of 7 that links out to 50 other pages. A PageRank 6 that links out only to your page and no one else would probably even benefit you more than the other two pages that link to you.

It takes a lot of links to get any PageRank value. There is no set number because of all of the factors involved. No one can tell you that if you have X number of links from web pages with a PageRank of Y that you will have a PageRank of N. If there was a formula like that, then Google would just change it tomorrow. So don’t run out and buy some guru’s ebook because they say they have uncovered the secret or broken the code.

Providing good content is a great way to get a lot of relevant backlinks. Google’s system is designed for natural growth. Having too many links suddenly pop up leading to your website overnight will not help you. You might find a way to temporarily boost your web pages’s popularity, but Google will slam it back down to nothing as soon as it finds the mistake.

The way to get on top and stay on top is through organic SEO and natural growth. Providing good content means other webmasters who have websites with related topics will link to you without being asked. Providing tools people can use, videos, pictures, well-written articles and text, forums, blogs and other “sticky” material on your web pages will encourage that natural growth. Your PageRank will rise every time Google updates and there won’t be penalties down the road. It takes more time, but good content will help you more than anything else you do.

Now on to more important things like where you get your traffic.

Everyone seems to be so focused on Google that they don’t realize we are on the Internet, not the Googlenet.

1. Google is not the only search engine even though it is the largest by far.

2. Not everyone has to go to a search engine to find you if you promote your website properly.

3. Studies show that for most products, MSN, Yahoo!, and AOL traffic converts to sales at a higher ratio than Google traffic.

4. If everyone else focuses on Google, they leave the door open at the other search engines for you to laugh all the way to the bank on.

This article is about PageRank and ranking high in search engines, not about Google. So think outside the box with me here and actually consider that you can go ahead and rank high in other search engines and directories and make sales without offending the Google gods.

You do not have to build a different website for each search engine as some people suggest. Some actually do this and its okay to do, but there isn’t really a need to do so. The web pages that are optimized the best actually have top 10 results in several search engines including what people term the big three, Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.

There are several things that make your results better.

Any one of them done separately does not amount to much. However, if you do all of the basics, you can do well in all of the search engines.

1. Does your domain name contain some of the keywords or a phrase that you are targeting? If not, consider getting a new one.

2. Does each page of your website have the same title? If so, give each page a new unique title. Do not just use a bunch of words in the title. Make each page’s title reflect the major key phrase you are targeting with that page. Narrow the focus a little.

3. Do you have a unique description meta for each page? If not, I have just one question. Is every page in your website exactly the same? If it is, there isn’t much hope for you anyway. If it isn’t, then create a description tag for each page that actually describes the content of that page and one that targets the two or three key phrases you will be targeting on that page.

4. Search engines crawl web pages, not websites.

5. Do you have the same keywords meta tag in every page? Again, each page is unique. Use keywords that are actually used and found on that page. The keywords meta tag was never designed for you to stuff it with all the phrases you would like to be found for. It was designed to reflect keywords that are actually in the content of that page. Keyword meta tags may not mean much to Google any more, but they may to smaller search engines.

6. Saying you care only about ranking well in Google is like me offering you a dollar and you saying, “No thanks. I already have a dollar.”

7. Write good relevant text on each of your web pages. Target two or three key phrases per page. Optimize the text for both your visitors and the search engines. There is no set percentage. Just add them wherever you can keeping in mind the words need to also make sense to your visitors or potential customers. Getting a lot of traffic and making no sales is much worse than getting a little traffic and making some sales. Your potential customers come first. The search engines come second.

8. Don’t bother submitting your website to Google or MSN. They will find you. Yahoo! will also, but submitting there once won’t hurt you. Use a tool like submitexpress.com for the rest of the smaller search engines, then submit to DMOZ and DogPile. As you run across directories that are relevant to your topic, you can always submit to those then.

9. Join forums related to your topic. Actually sign up and participate in the forums. Become a member of the community. Be helpful. Answer questions. Discuss your topic. The links in your profile or signature line at the forum are visible, so there’s no need to spam people saying, “Come see my site! I have . . . etc., etc.” If you do, you’ll lose those links because you will just get banned. Follow forum rules and you’ll find those links will bring you a little traffic directly and the links will help you. Also forums get crawled often and search engine spiders will follow links and also crawl your website.

10. Set up a blog. Post to it often. That adds fresh content to your website often. Search engines like websites that are updated regularly. Add other content to your website often as well. New pictures, videos, articles, etc.

If you do just the things I mentioned there on that list, your search engine results will improve over time.

Some of those things may improve your PageRank and search engine results right away. There is no magic pill, no hidden secret in an ebook somewhere, no guru who broke the code that can send you a CD to make you rich overnight. There is only good standard practises that will hold up to the test of time. You will never get rich on the web by taking the “I don’t want to have to work at it” approach.

When people come and ask me, “Why isn’t my website ranking higher in the search engines?” or “Why isn’t Google giving me a higher PageRank?”, I like to ask them, “What have you done to improve your results?” 

Nine times out of 10, they haven’t done much. What will be your answer to my question if I ask you that?

SEO, Search Engines

How anchor text boosts your search engine rankings

Anchor text is the hyperlinked words on a web page – the words you click on when you click a link.

Here’s an example, reciprocal links, in which “reciprocal links” is the anchor text.

Anchor text usually gives your visitors useful information about the content of the page you’re linking to.

Here’s why anchor text is so important…

It tells search engines what the page is about. Used wisely, it boosts your rankings in search engines, especially in Google.

If you use “click here” as the words people are going to click on, you’re telling people the page is about the subject “click here”. If you use “Part 2″ as the anchor text, your telling the search engines the page is discussing “part 2″.

You wouldn’t want to rank highly for “click here” or “Part 2″.

Anchor text is so important that it’s possible for a page to appear in the top 10 in Google’s search results for a phrase which isn’t mentioned anywhere on the page.

Some blog publishers have fun using “Google bombing” to get pages ranked highly for humorous phrases. If the phrase is obscure, only a handful of links will win the phrase a No.1 ranking. If it’s highly competitive, hundreds or thousands of links might be needed.

[UPDATE: In January, 2007, Google created a new algorithm which reduced the impact of many prank Google bombs, but anchor text is still very important.]

When asking other sites to link to your site, it’s a good idea to provide them with the HTML code ready to cut and paste into their page. That way, you choose the anchor text.

However, if your site is all about purple widgets, you don’t want only “purple widgets” to be used as the phrase in every link to your site. Over-optimizing like that would create an unnatural pattern.

You can use anchor text in:

• External links – links from other sites
• Internal links – links on your pages
• Navigation maps
• Links on your main page. A very important spot.

Remember that real live humans will read your links as well as search engines, so the words in your anchor text need to make sense!

SEO, Search Engines

What are backlinks and how do you find them?

Backlinks or “back links” are links from other web sites to your site. They’re sometimes also known as incoming links.

Links from your site to other sites are forward links, usually described as “links” or hyperlinks.

So links going in the reverse direction are backward links, or backlinks.

Google’s free toolbar shows backward links but the results are confusing.

If you have the toolbar installed on your Internet Explorer browser, you can visit a web site, click on the blue “i” and then click on “Backward links” to see what appears to be the number of links pointing to the site you’re visiting.

However, ONLY SOME of the site’s backlinks are displayed.

How to find backlinks using Google

You can use link:example.com

This gives an unreliable sample. For more reliable results, type the following command into the Google search box:

example.com -site:www.example.com -site:example.com

(Remember to type in your actual site, not “example.com”.)

Doing this shows you pages that link to your site, minus the links on pages on your own site.

(You’ll also see sites that just mention your site but don’t actually link to it.)

BEWARE: A Google backlink check teases us. It does NOT show all the backlinks that Google knows about. Here’s a much better way…

How to find more backlinks using Yahoo!

Go to Yahoo! Site Explorer - http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com - and login.

Type the URL of the site you want to explore.

Click on “Explore URL”.

Click on “Inlinks”.

Modify your search to make it more useful. Select the options to show Inlinks “except from this domain” and “entire site”. This will exclude internal links and show you all external links that Yahoo! knows about to ANY page of the website.

How to find backlinks to an individual page

At Yahoo! Site Explorer, type in the URL at the top of the page, and Click on “Explore URL”.

At MSN, use

link:example.com/page

In Google, it’s not so simple. Try this search:

example.com/page.html -site:example.com

It doesn’t actually give you “links”. It gives you mentions. However, most mentions tend to be links and it’s more accurate than Google’s “link:” command.

How to find backlinks using MSN

At MSN, do this search:

link:example.com

OR link:example.com -site:example.com

At MSN can also use:

linkdomain:example.com which shows pages that link to ALL pages on your site.

How to find backlinks using Alltheweb

At Alltheweb.com, do this search:

link:www.example.com

(Remember to change “example” and you MUST include the “www”.)

How to find backlinks using Hotbot

At Hotbot, type this into the search box:

linkdomain:www.example.com

Search using Hotbot.

Link popularity check

You can check for backlinks by using link popularity sites such as www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/default.htm

Free backlinks checker

You can find which sites are linking to you by using this free tool, which also shows the anchor text used in the link:

www.helpfulinformation.org/seo-tools/anchortext.pl

Why backlinks are important

When ranking sites, search engines such as Google look at the number and quality of sites that link to your site. Ideally, you want backlinks from sites in your industry that have many popular sites linking to them.

How to get backlinks

Common ways to get backlinks include exchanging links with other sites (reciprocal links) and by placing articles you write in article directories and on other sites.

Perhaps the most effective way of all is to create such a useful, fascinating site that other sites voluntarily link to yours.

FREE way to get links to your site

Check out the free Value Exchange for sites in your category that are eager to exchange reciprocal links with other sites. As the Value Exchange’s popularity grows, it is becoming more and more useful.

In some topics, it will locate only a few potential links partners. In other niches, it can find several hundred potential links partners for you. I highly recommend it.

To avoid the displeasure of search engines, getting reciprocal links should be just one of the strategies you use, not your main strategy. Matt Cutts of Google has made it clear that it’s possible to overdo reciprocal links.

An excellent way to get backlinks

If you want thousands of visitors a day from search engines (and don’t we all!) it’s absolutely essential that you encourage other sites in your field to link to you.

One excellent way to get links to your site is by writing articles for newsletters, which are then published on other people’s sites.

In the book Turn Words Into Traffic Jim and Dallas Edwards give step-by-step instructions showing you how to do it.

SEO, Search Engines

Unnatural linking methods can get your site banned

An artificial link structure is a way of linking websites together in a method designed purely with the aim of getting higher search engine rankings.

A few years ago, artificial link structures were popular and successful.

I interviewed a webmaster who owned a cluster of 20 or 30 sites all about different kinds of posters. The sites were linked together using multiple links.

The sites ranked well and he was earning about $5,000 a month in affiliate commissions.

Unfortunately for him, those golden days didn’t last. Eventually, all the sites in the cluster were penalized by Google. I don’t think any of those sites exist any more.

These days, the search engines are smarter. Excessive crosslinking is likely to get your sites penalized by Google and especially by Yahoo!, which is stricter than Google.

Some affiliates now do tricky things such as getting domains registered around the world in the names of friends and relatives, so that their artificial link structures are not obvious.

For long-term success, build a genuinely useful, interesting website that people WANT to link to. If you do that, you’ll automatically have a natural link structure. Here are some other factors which seem to ring alarm bells, and what to do about them:

• Having a large percentage of reciprocal links could ring alarm bells. Good, popular sites have lots of one-way links. Try to get one-way links to your site, for example, by writing articles for other sites. In my experience, reciprocal links are still very helpful, but make sure they’re not your only linking strategy.
• Having identical anchor text on all links to your site looks artificial. When sites link to you, try to persuade them to use a variety of key phrases in the anchor text (the words people click on). One way to do this is to provide the HTML code for them to paste into their sites.
• Sudden huge increases in backlinks (inbound links) look artificial. People doing something unusual get huge surges in links. Get links to your site steadily, a few at a time, in a natural way.
•  Links to “link farms” are dangerous. Link farms create pages of links which are cut and pasted into large clusters of sites. To search engines, these are “bad neighborhoods”. Also, it’s not a good idea to link to sites which have huge directories indiscriminately linking to anyone. Link to good, useful sites related to your topic.
• It’s possible that getting lots of site-wide links could cause you trouble. “Site-wide links” are links which appear on all pages of a site, linking to your site. That’s an unnatural pattern, but probably less harmful than some of the other factors. A wonderfully generous man is linking to this site from more than 2,000 pages on his site. You probably want to avoid having a large number of friends who do that.

If all this seems terribly complicated, take heart from the fact that the search engines’ ultimate goal is to deliver good search results. Build a useful, interesting, high-quality site and you’ve taken a huge leap in the direction of search engine success.

SEO, Search Engines

Excessive crosslinking an expensive mistake

Crosslinking means linking websites you own together.

Crosslinking is acceptable to search engines. Excessive crosslinking is not.

If you link in a logical, sensible way, crosslinking is accepted by search engines.

For example, in an article about purple widgets you could link to a site you own that is all about purple widgets.

Excessive crosslinking means linking sites you own together in multiple ways and doing it so much than you attract a penalty from a search engine. Both Google and Yahoo! warn you against excessive crosslinking.

This site was penalized for excessive crosslinking.

I hope the following story will help other sites that have been penalized.

Getting a Yahoo! penalty lifted

In mid-2005, after a long wait, Yahoo! lifted its penalty on AssociatePrograms.com.

Because Yahoo! never explained what I did wrong and what I did right, some of the following story is guesswork. That’s the way things often are in search engine optimization.

I linked three of my sites together. That helped my visitors and helped me. I added a few more links, and a few more, and then dozens of links. Things went well for many months.

I added more links, and Yahoo! penalized me. Google didn’t.

As far as I was concerned, there were good reasons for the links. I guess Yahoo! didn’t see things my way.

For ages, while the site remained in the Yahoo! directory, it was nowhere to be found in the Yahoo! search index.

Then for a while a search at Yahoo! for…

url:http://www.associateprograms.com

…revealed that AssociatePrograms.com WAS in the search index.

However, being there didn’t do me any good, because none of my pages was showing up in any Yahoo! searches, in spite of having No.1 and No.2 rankings in Google. I was obviously being penalized.

Here are the steps I took to get the Yahoo! penalty lifted…

I checked the Yahoo! guidelines

I went to http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/deletions/deletions-05.html and checked the Yahoo! quality guidelines carefully to ensure I wasn’t breaking any of their rules.

I removed almost all the crosslinks among the sites I owned.

I tried the Yahoo! feedback form

If you do a search at Yahoo! and scroll down to the bottom of the page you’ll see this:

“Help us improve your search experience,” and a link that says: “Send us feedback.”

So I clicked on the link and wrote a polite message in the contact form saying AssociatePrograms.com pages were not showing up in the search results, although they were being found in Google.

I waited several months. Nothing happened.

I wrote a polite email

I hunted around the Internet for helpful articles and at WebmasterWorld.com I found an email address…

webmasterworldfeedback AT yahoo DOT com

I wrote to that address and asked for a review.

I won’t tell you word-for-word what I wrote, because I don’t want Yahoo! to receive dozens of emails that look exactly the same.

Explaining that my site appeared to have been penalized by the Yahoo! search engine, I said that the only possible reason I could think of was excessive crosslinking.

I explained that I respect search engines and see them as my friends, so I’d removed nearly all of the links between AssociatePrograms.com and other sites I own.

After deciding that it might be easier to get ONE ban lifted, rather than multiple bans, I mentioned only AssociatePrograms.com.

I wanted to give Yahoo! a strong reason for replacing my site in its search index, so I wrote…

“AssociatePrograms.com has been a respected directory of affiliate programs ever since it was launched in 1998.

“It has ranked highly in Google for years, so if it is not found in Yahoo! that reduces the effectiveness of your search engine.”

I didn’t expect it to make any difference, but I also mentioned that I’d been buying advertising on Yahoo! for several years.

I said I’d done my best to co-operate, and repeated my request for a review.

I waited, and waited

I’d been warned that I’d have to be patient. Getting a review can take weeks.

However, it was only after waiting four months that the site reappeared in Yahoo!’s search index. It looks as though I’ve been forgiven.

I can’t say for certain that my email did the trick.

However, the site I mentioned in the email is no longer penalized.

Of the other two sites, one has been freed from the penalty and is ranking well in Yahoo! but the other still appears to be heavily penalized.

Is your site in the Yahoo! search index?

To see if your site or page is listed in the Yahoo! search index, Yahoo! advises you to enter an identifiable phrase (5-10 words) in quotes, that matches the title or text on the web page you are looking for into the Yahoo! search box at: http://search.yahoo.com.

“If your site appears in the results, it’s listed in the Yahoo! Search Index, and you don’t need to complete a feedback form as your request will not be processed,” Yahoo! says.

If your site was once in the index and is currently not found in a unique phrase search, and you feel that site is in full compliance with the Yahoo! Content Quality Guidelines, you can inquire about your site’s status by completing the following form: http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_urlstatus

If that doesn’t get you anywhere and you’ve waited several weeks after fixing everything wrong with your site, you can try this Second Review Request form:

http://add.yahoo.com/fast/help/us/ysearch/cgi_rereview

I’m trying to get another penalty lifted

What if your site IS in the search index but is obviously being penalized? Yahoo! doesn’t really tell you, except to direct you to its Quality Content Guidelines.

At the bottom of that page, Yahoo! asks: “Is this enough information?”

I’ve clicked on “No” and told Yahoo! that another of my sites IS in the search index but is obviously being penalized (because of my past excessive crosslinking, I assume). I’ve politely asked for a review. Now I’m waiting to see what happens. I’ve been waiting a long time.

I’ll update this article if there’s any news.

If your site is being penalized by Yahoo!, I hope this helps.

Good luck!

SEO, Search Engines

Google bombing works at MSN and Yahoo!

Google bombing is endeavoring to get a web page ranked highly for a phrase by persuading websites to link to the page using the phrase as the words in the link.

Adam Mathes apparently invented the practise in 2001. He persuaded blog owners to link to a friend’s site using the phrase “talentless hack”.

Here’s another example. If you type the phrase “miserable failure” into Google, you may see George W. Bush’s biography as the first entry on the search results page.

The technique works because Google places a lot of importance on “anchor text”, the clickable words in a link.

You can use this fact to help your pages rank highly in search engines. When asking other sites to link to you, provide them with a snippet of HTML code to paste into their pages. With any luck, they’ll use it unchanged.

However, don’t make the anchor text exactly the same in all links. To search engines, that would look like an artificial link structure.

Google bombing works at MSN and Yahoo!

I’ve just checked. If you type “miserable failure” into the search box at Google, Yahoo! and MSN today, the Bush biography is the No.1 ranking site on all three major search engines.

This was true when I tested it in February 2005 and again in December 2005.

So choosing your anchor text carefully is still very important for all three main search engines.

2007 Update

In January, 2007, Google wrote an algorithm which reduced the impact of many prank Google bombs, where people linked to pages which did not contain the phrase used in the links. So when linking to any page, always use relevant phrases.

Search Engines

One-way links: Why you need them and how to get them

One-way links are links to your site from sites which do not receive a link from your site.

They send a powerful message to the search engines – that your website is so valuable or interesting or useful that other sites want to tell people about it.

One-way links are wonderful things to have because they increase your link popularity – the number of pages linking to your site. Search engines such as Google place huge importance on link popularity when ranking your site.

You can also receive direct traffic to your site from people who click on the links.

All links to your site are good, but where possible always aim for topic-related links.

Late in 2005, Matt Cutts of Google made it plain in his blog that Google frowns upon sites which “overdo” reciprocal links. Heed his warning and try to make as many of your links as possible one-way links.

Ways to get one-way links

• Create a useful, interesting web site and other sites will naturally link to it. The vast majority of the thousands of links to THIS site were not requested.
• Submit your site to major directories, such as Yahoo! and DMOZ.org, in the appropriate category.
• Write articles and submit them to newsletters which are then archived online.
• Hunt for sites that complement yours and ask them to publish your articles.
• Submit brief, useful hints to newsletters for the same reason.
• Submit articles to article directories.
• Publish articles on your site and invite other sites to publish them on their sites, with a link to you.
• Write testimonials for products you love. Companies often post testimonials on their site with a link to the submitting site. Joe Vitale has taken this tactic to extraordinary lengths. For examples, trying doing a search on Google for “joe vitale +testimonial”.
• Participate helpfully in forums which allow a text link to your site in a signature. Read the forum instructions first, or you risk making an ass of yourself.
• Consider buying text link ads on other sites, for example from Linkadage or Text Link Ads. (Remember that Matt Cutts has written unfavorably about buying links.) Better still, arrange for articles to be published on other sites with a link to your site in them. You may have to use some innovative thinking to achieve this. The results make the effort worth while.
• Buy ads in newsletters on your topic which are archived online.
• Locate industry-specific directories and submit your site to them. For example, if your site is on a health topic, look for health-related directories.
• Give away free ebooks and white papers that contain links to your site.
• Create simple web-based free software. Tell other sites, newsletters and forums about it and ask for a link to it.
• Create downloadable software which contains links to your site.
• Get listed in business directories.
• Create a blog and get it listed in blog directories.
• Join business associations which list their members’ sites online.
• Write regular news releases and submit them to topic-related web sites and Internet news wires such as PRWeb and Business Wire.
• Make arrangements for other sites to archive your newsletters on their sites.
• Get your white papers published on other web sites.
• Submit your free ebooks to ebook directories.
• Submit your downloadable software to software directories, such as Download.com
• Locate a popular site in your niche which would appreciate having you as a regular columnist. Write tips, lively commentary, product reviews, or whatever topics suit your niche.
• Syndicate your material to other sites. Create a content syndication feed (RSS feed) and include a link to your site. Use PHP rather than Javascript to ensure search engines parse your headings and links.
• Do something funny or outrageous or brilliant and people will link to your site without being asked.
• Use gimmicks. If people see something odd on a website, they’ll often tell other people about it. You can also alert newsletter publishers and suggest they mention your gimmick in their newsletter. For example, Jim Crawford tells us how to make a sound play with a mouseover.

Search Engines

Reciprocal links help you in two ways

Reciprocal links are arranged when two web sites agree to link to each other.

Reciprocal links are also known as “link swaps”, “link exchanges” and “link partners”.

A common misspelling is “reciprical links”.

Reciprocal links help you in two ways:

1. They increase your web site traffic, from people who click on the links.

2. Reciprocal links also play a major role in boosting your rankings in search engines.

Warning: Late in 2005, Google’s Matt Cutts made it clear that it’s possible to “overdo” reciprocal links. Getting good, solid, reciprocal links should be part of your links strategy, not your total marketing strategy.

When ranking sites, the major search engines take into account the number and quality of the sites that link to you.

Persuading good quality, relevant sites to link to you can be tedious, time-consuming and frustrating. Here are some tips to increase your chances of success.

One way to find link partners is to do searches in major search engines such as Google and Yahoo! to find sites which complement yours but are not direct competitors.

Many sites also link to direct competitors, figuring that the benefits outweigh any disadvantages.

Examine their links pages

A refinement of this strategy is to visit your competitors’ sites and complementary sites and examine their links pages or resources pages.

The sites you’ll find there are potential reciprocal links partners. They should be linking to you.

Now visit THEIR links pages and examine them, and so on down the chain.

You should end up with a long list of good sites with which to exchange links.

How to set up reciprocal links

• Find GOOD QUALITY, complementary sites.
• Place a link to them on your site.
• Only AFTER you’ve placed a link to them, email the owner of the site a short, friendly note. Address him or her by name. (If the name isn’t on the site, you may be able to find it at www.whois.sc)
• Genuinely praise something on the site. If you can’t find something worth praising, delete the site from your list.
• Tell the web site owner you’ve linked to their site, giving them the URL of the page where you’ve place your link.
• Ask for a link back to your site, suggesting a page where the link would be appropriate.
• Three weeks later, if there’s been no reply, send a brief, polite reminder. It’s easy for emails to be lost or overlooked.
• Use the phone and/or snail mail. A link from a good site is a very valuable thing. If you can’t get noticed by email, consider trying a phone call or posting a letter. They’re more expensive but also more likely to attract the answer you want.
• Keep an alphabetical record of sites you’ve linked to and requested links from. You need to know who you’ve contacted and who you haven’t.

Want links from pages with high PageRank?

To boost their PageRank, some webmasters concentrate on getting links only from sites that have high PageRank. (If we all did this, no new site would ever get reciprocal links.)

If you want to try this approach, PRsearch is a useful free search tool to use. It gives you Google search results PLUS PageRank.

You type in a key phrase and can quickly see the PageRank of pages optimized for that phrase.

You can also click on the number beside the words “inbound links” and you may find more sites with high PageRank.

Really serious ways of getting links

You can arrange newsletter article exchanges with other newsletter publishers in your niche, preferably with newsletters which are archived online.

Some webmasters also arrange “article swaps”. You write an article to be published on their website and they write an article for your site. This gives you an in-context link, which is much more effective than a mere link on a links page.

Reciprocal links websites

You can search in Google for link exchange websites which publish directories of website owners who actively exchange links with each other. As a general rule, the easier and more automated link exchanging is, the more risky it is that you’ll be doing something which the search engines don’t like. You don’t, for example, want to get involved in link farms which link to totally unrelated websites.

Search Engines