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Build Link Popularity The Smart Way
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.
Search Engine Optimization SEO Made Easy
SEO is a never ending battle! So is SEO over-rated? I don't think it is. Some say that Google's automated PageRank? system and Alexa's Traffic Rank system are losing ground. This may be may be true to some point but the fact still remains that we want at the top of the search results. And to achieve this we need to educate ourselves and do the work or hire someone else to the work for us. Search Engine Optimization "SEO" is a term we see all over the net. For those of you that are unsure exactly what is meant by SEO, it's simply adjusting many characteristics of your website to conform with what the major search engines deem important. That's where the simple stops. It's complicated only because no one other than the developers themselves know all the rules and even then the rules are constantly changing. What I'll try to do here is cover the basics that have fairly consistent lately. Keep in mind however there will always be inconsistencies when it comes SEO. For example, I recently read an e-book that said to imbed a few of your primary keywords in the "alt" tag of your logo graphic. The same day, I was reading an online article of equal quality and this author cautioned against such a tactic due to possible penalties by the search engines. So which did I do? See for yourself by hovering your mouse over the logo. I don't mind a little risk as long as the risk is low and there may be nice benefits, but don't get carried away. We certainly don't want to get banned by any search engines. I get the heebie-jeebies just saying it. That would simply end many of us. Because Google's PageRank? and Alexa's Traffic Rank systems are really two different animals, I will focus primarily on Google's PageRank? system for now. So lets get started in no particular order. Link Popularity: I guess we can start with the hardest part of search engine optimization. Link popularity. The ultimate goal here is to gain the respect of the search engines. And how we do that is by who we know or at least associate with in the spiders eyes. We want as many quality incoming links as possible with as few low-ranked outbound links as possible. We need to consider several factors when we approach any site to request a link exchange. 1. First of all, we want to focus only on sites that compliment ours. By that I mean directly on indirectly are in the same category or field or relating field as our site without necessarily competing with our site. I say not-necessarily because personally I have no problem linking to competitors site as long as we both mutually agree benefits. Some fear they'll lose some of their site visitors but I feel the best way to keep visitors on your site and get them to return is by providing a high quality site with great original content. 2. Second we want to pay attention to their Google page rank. To do this if you haven't already done so, download Google free toolbar http://toolbar.google.com/ Once installed, you can see the PageRank? of any site you go to. You want as many sites as possible with high PR's. Set a goal of getting a few PR6 or PR7 sites. This will do wonders to your rank. In fact one PR7 might do more for you than hundreds on no or very low PR sites. 3. Third, the engines like to see incoming links from what they consider on authoritative site. So aggressively go after well established, high ranking sites that share the some focus as your site. 4. Fourth on our list are the sites to stay away from. Sites that generate artificially created links. Link farms and even huge link exchange sites can even get your site banned. I don't mean to make anyone nervous here. The fact is, if you are generally doing the right thing for the right reasons, you probably have nothing to worry about. If you find yourself trying to hide something or hoping an search engine doesn't catch something, then you may want to re-evaluate your strategies. Requesting a link. The first thing you should do when requesting a link exchange is little research. Glance over the site in question and consider where your site link might hold the most relevance one their site. This will benefit both parties. And then don't be afraid to offer the suggestions when you contact the site administrator. I have had sites accept my link on a suggested page even though they have a section designed just for outside links. I have even accepted links that I would have normally rejected because the fit would have seemed wrong if they hadn't shown a better fit. Always add their link to your site before you make the request and include the page url of the link when making contact. Keep track of the contacts you've made and if you haven't received a reply. Do a simple search on there site to see if they added your link and forgot to reply. At most, send one more request and be sure to include the words link exchange in the subject line so they don't delete your mail as spam. Then if you still don't get a reply within a week simply remove theirs from your site and move on. Don't send any more mail. Consider the lack of response as a rejection and accept it. Don't take things personal and send a negative e-mail. I have actually received a couple of these and there's really no point. If you do get a reply and a link send a short thank you note. Always include the exact text of the link you want on their site. Again, before you do this it helps if you look at other links on their site. If they have a 3 or 4 word description with each link, you don't want to send a whole paragraph in your links description. What you do want to do is include your best key words. In fact, a short description with the right key words can benefit you far better than a watered down version. Keep it short and sweet. Make things as easy as possible for the webmaster. Include the html code of your link so he/she can just copy and paste if they decide to.
Getting Listed in the ODP, Google Directory
First of all, the Google directory is really just the open directory project (ODP: url here) with a few adjustments. While listings on DMOZ.org are arranged within their category according to simple alphabetic order, listings in the Google Directory are based upon PageRank [link]. Thus, sites with higher PageRanks will show up higher on the list of sites under any given category. You can see the PageRank of a site pictorially by looking at the little green bar off to the left of each listing. The other major difference is that the Google Directory updates its listings only once every few months. Therefore, a website that is accepted into the ODP today may have to wait 3 months or more before it is listed in the Google Directory. If you go to DMOZ.org, you can see all the latest listings because each category page is updated immediately after a new site is added.
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