One of the secrets to building a reciprocal link network is by increasing the number of links pointing to your website. Incoming links to your website are important to search engines and are used to help determine your page rank. The more incoming links you have, then the higher your website is placed in Googles search results.

What most people do not know is that not all incoming links are given the same weight, and that the incoming, non reciprocal links are given more importance.

There are many ways to get inbound links to your site without having to give out reciprocal links or put out alot of cash. Here are just a few ideas.

• Good website content. You must make sure that your website is full of useful, informative content. When you have a lot of relevant content other website owners will want to link to your website because it will be a great resource to them and their visitors. Some examples of good content are ebooks, a newsletter, tools and software, free articles, tips that are related to your website, and a blog that is updated daily with new material.

Search engines and directories try to locate the websites that offer something valuable and unique to the Internet. People actually link to sites simply because they find the content useful.

• Testimonials. If you happen to find an interesting, informative website then send a testimonial to the website owner. They may give you a link to your website if they post your testimonial on their website. These links all add up and are important for search engine ranking.

• Online Directories. There are many online directories that you can submit your website to. This helps with getting inbound links to your site. Some of the directories require you to pay or provide a reciprocal link. But, there are many online directories that will accept your submission for free and with no reciprocal link.
  Just do some research to determine which ones are free, or if you have the extra cash, go ahead and pay up (or you can send some my way).
• Content Articles. One of the best ways to get inbound links to your website is through article marketing. Interesting, informative, professionally written articles with the appropriate content can provide you with targeted traffic and high quality permanent links to your web site.

It is very important that your articles contain your targeted keywords and that they read well!

You can submit articles to websites, ezines, and article directories. An easy way to get your article published is to go to Google or Yahoo groups and do a search for “Internet Articles Publishing”. Get involved with some of the groups, this will allow you to find websites that are looking for articles.

Do not forget to put information about yourself, with a link to your website in the resource box of the article, as this will open up the potential for many inbound links to your website. Articles can be the most time consuming of link building tasks when you take into consideration the time it takes to write and submit the article. A helpful tip is to make sure you add the locations of the article submission sites to a folder in your “Favorites”. This will save time when you go to submit new articles.

• Free Ebook. Alot of people think that ebooks are hard to write and could take a long time to put together, but you can actually create one in no time. You can make it a collection of your favorite tools, resources and articles that are related to your website. As long as the ebook is considered useful by your visitors then they may link to your website for a copy or agree to offer your ebook on their website. Make sure you include links to your website in the ebook.

• Blogs. Combining a link building campaign with blogs will give you alot of exposure for your business or program. Blogs are another tool that many entrepreneurs are using to produce great results. Because Blogs are updated with content on a regular basis they tend to rank higher then normal websites.

What most people do not realize is that Blogs are free and take just a few minutes to set up!

The easiest way to get inbound links with blogs is to simply host one on your website and update it frequently. Blogs are linked to more often because the content is being constantly updated. You will also get more inbound links with blogs when you submit it to blog directories. Do a search on Google for “free blog directory” and you will find many directories that you can submit to for free.

• Host a free article directory. Why not create an article directory on your website and have visitors submit articles to it? You can then request a link back to your website in exchange for the article submission. This will improve your inbound links while also creating free content for your website.

• Get listed in the major directories. Yahoo and the Open Directory Project are two of the most important directories at present. The Open Directory Project is free but it can be difficult to get a listing approved because they only list sites with original content that do not have alot of affiliate links. Inclusion in the Open Directory Project and Yahoo is well worth the effort and will be very helpful in boosting the standing for your site in search engine results.

There are also many smaller directories that are set up for particular areas of interest. Getting listed in them will take some time, but persistence will pay off, not only in your search engine page ranking but in bringing targeted traffic to your website. A few visitors to your website that are interested in what you have to offer are more valuable then many uninterested visitors.

It is also important to make sure that any sites you link to are related to your topic. You can use search engines to find related sites, and by linking to sites that have a high page ranking in the search engines you will provide your site with more exposure.

Remember that non reciprocal links are more important for search engine ranking because they are not reciprocated (search engines can actually detect whether links are reciprocal) and they do not have to be monitored as reciprocal links.

Here is one last tip, do a search on the keywords that you want to improve your search engine ranking for. From these results use the domains of the sites that rank above your own, and go to Yahoo and enter, linkdomain:www. site that rank above yours. com. Contact the web sites that resulted from the linkdomain search and ask them to link to your site. Do this for each of the linkdomain searches.

The ideas above offer the most consistently over time and even though they may seem time consuming, are well worth the effort.

I wish you success in building your inbound link network, and even though it will take time and effort, done right, the rewards will be worth it!

Joe Rispoli

Copyright 2006 by Joe Rispoli

All businesses want their websites ranked at the top with search engines, so how does one go about doing this? There are many different ways to help get your website ranked higher during those searches. A key way of increasing your web traffic and optimizing your site for search engines is by increasing the number of organic links to your site. Previously, a couple of the more conventional ways to build links were through directory submission or buying links. The value in using these artificial methods have declined, there are different search engines that do not even recommend using high quality paid directories. In respect of Google’s recent laws, paying for links is not allowed, and many companies are being penalized.

Stop building links artificially and utilize one or more of the following ways to build links organically, optimizing your search engine rankings.

Create a genuine yearly competition or organize a charitable event such as blog action day.

Mirror a high traffic site such as free software sites / open source software sites, or an activist site.

Join social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Yelp, Inc.and maintain them over time.

Offer a rebate for a particular group, such as working class families, veterans or whichever disadvantaged group you decide upon.

Maintain a business blog that is updated regularly with high value resources.

Posting articles on a few quality article directories with your resource box and URL is a sure fire way of creating back links.

Send out a press release via a few online services.

Network through business colleagues and people you know and have them link to you.

Answer questions in different forums like Yahoo Answers.

Go Green, start a green initiative. There are countless opportunities on how to go about achieving this, carbon free websites is a great example.

Add resources to user generated sites like associated content or zimbio.

Create a regularly updated resource list like the Web developer’s Handbook that people will continue to refer back to and refer others to.

Get your content translated and republished in multiple languages and countries.

Create CSS solutions for common tasks or CSS problems, or even more effective would be a whole set of solutions.

Program a free tool or software everyone needs for a specific niche, but not one that everybody offers yet.

Fashion an enduring partnership with similar service providers, like a graphic design agency joining forces with a PSD2XHTML provider.

Publish recipes for healthy, Greek, Indian, raw or any type of food that is desirable to others but not everybody can buy.

Perform a community service or help with animals and display images of them for others to see.

Join a community and become one of the more prominent members like Maki of DoshDosh did on Sphinn and Digg.

Build a community like 9Rules where people “proudly” are part of and display it on their sites.

Develop a Firefox plugin for a common reoccurring task or having to deal with a widely spread annoyance, like BugMeNot .

Join the “freebies” bandwagon, people love free stuff and when everyone loves you, the people willing to spend money will find you.

Offer free music or other audio downloads, or at least a way to listen to the audio online.

Give away a free eBook, or better yet offer several free eBooks like O’Reilly does.

Offer free high quality icons for download and free use.

Have background patterns available for free for web designers.

Give away free wallpapers for download and invite artists to modify.

Offer free scripts and “chunks code” for webmasters to use freely.

Offer fundamental self improvement quotes or advice like hackyourself

Give away images using a creative commons provider such as creative commons on your website.

These are a few of the ways you are able to build links naturally and enhance you SEO. Keep this in mind when you go from very few links to having an additional 3,000 in a week, the spiders notice it and your ranking drops. So stay consistent with building your links naturally and avoid the artificial means of link building.

Most ecommerce sites are aware of the importance of link generating in relationship to search engine traffic and Page Rank. The idea of building 10 000 inbound links may appear daunting, but it doesn’t need to be. Just follow a few tips from the SEO Marketers.

In-Site Link Generating

This is the most overlooked aspect of link generation. Whether the ecommerce business is building a link generating system to earn revenue, or to promote their own business, they need to take a good look at how their linking system is built.

There are a few common mistakes that most sites make. Most sites create landing pages to attract new visitors. They will pay for links to this page, and will generate their own links to this page. But they forget to create a featured article link in their menu. An ecommerce site can easily have 1000 pages, with 1000 potential links to the landing page.

Blogs

One of the biggest benefits of a blog is that it is submitted to the search engines every time a new post is published. Each and every post should have an embedded link to a landing page or an article. A blog with 200 posts will generate 200 – 400 links.

Blogs are infinite. Thousands of successful ecommerce internet marketing campaigns have been built around a series of 5 – 25 blogs that are constructed for no other purpose than link generating. The thought of managing numerous blogs causes many new ecommerce business owners to panic. Most of us have read about black hat SEO and being banned. This is true, but if there are no Google ads on the blogs, then there are no rules broken.

Managing 25 blogs is easy. Think of them as a newspaper or newsletter. Each one is built to promote a service, product, or feature of your site. Each one has a link to the ecommerce site in the sidebar and in the posts. The trick is to use ‘free content.’ Do not try to use original content. It is not necessary.

The objective of each blog is to generate links and to pre-sell the product so people click through to the website. Posting two articles a week, on each blog, and on the host website, will add 102 pages of content. If each of those articles has 2 links in it, then each month the blog network is generating 816 new inbound links. In one year, the blogs will generate enough links to statistically increase a web page’s Page Rank to PR5.

Directories

Google has started to give serious consideration to websites that are listed in directories. There are directories for everything from websites and blogs, to forums and newsletters, to podcasts and live chats.

In fact, it is easy to build your own directory. The web is full of cheap and free directory scripts. Most directories increase in PR fairly quickly. Each time someone lists on the directory they must put a link back. The directory owner can also list their directory with paid services. It is not unheard of for a directory to receive a few PR8 pages within one year. Links on a PR8 page can be sold for as much as $1000 a month or they can be used to increase the traffic and Page Rank of the ecommerce website.

Blog directories such as blog catalogue can be a major source of traffic, that has nothing to do with SEO, search engines, or page rank.

Forums

Next to directories, the new SEO pundits are claiming that Google gives forums the highest ranking. This means that a link from a forum will increase the PR of a website faster than a link from a blog. However, stay away from the search engine forums like Yahoo and MSN groups. These are ‘closed’ to Google sites.

Forum posting can be tedious and time consuming. Building forums for other people to post in can take time, and should never be considered a ‘first line’ in the marketing, but after a year or two, a couple of forums can have a dramatic impact on the SEO and PR quality of a website.

One common practice is for a forum owner to make 10 – 30 accounts and have them talk to each other. This way they can offer information in relevant ‘bite size’ information. It also gives the business owner an opportunity to generate more links, and let other people generate links.

Social Networking

Using sites like facebook, myspace, bebo, squido, gather and others as social networking ‘lenses’ is fast replacing the ‘business card’ as a quick way to introduce yourself to people. A lens can build links, as well as increase PR by increasing traffic.

Social networks put the traffic generating aspect of an Internet business back in the hands of the public, giving them more control over their traffic.

Networking

Setting up a network like this is one way to generate the links needed to increase traffic and profits. However, getting a few dozen likeminded people ‘on board’ and working together can life a few small businesses above the masses and add ‘real’ power to their internet marketing campaign.

You’ve built a great website, loaded it with fantastic products and services, and now you’re wondering to yourself how in the world do you get visitors to see it ? Building up a good amount of links into your site from other websites is an excellent way to increase the traffic to your website. So how do you build links ? There are many ways to build up links into your site. In this article I’ll go over ten ideas that should help you with building links and traffic to your site.

1. Reciprocal Links – Do some research, find other websites that are related to yours in some way and contact the webmaster about a possible link exchange. Don’t spam a thousand sites bugging for links. Take your time and write up a professional request. Remember that quality is better than quantity, choose the sites you exchange links with wisely, don’t just swap links with any site you come across.

2. Website Directories – Submit your site to website directories, most offer free links. This can be time consuming, but it’s well worth the effort. Some website directories charge a small fee for links, only you can decide if the link that it will provide for your website is worth paying for.

3. Blogs – Posting comments on blogs is a great way to build back links. Don’t just comment and leave nothing but a link to your site, be sure the comment you leave is relevant to the blog post, and your link back is not done in a spammy way.

4. Forums – Most forums allow signature links, not only do you gain a link back with your signature but you also gain a lot of exposure because your signature shows up every time you make a post in a forum.

5. Buying links – There are many, many sites that offer link sales. You can purchase links on their home pages, sub pages and some will sell site wide links. Again, you should be choosy when deciding whether or not to buy links on a website. Be sure the link you’re buying is a good value for you money. You want your back links to benefit you, not hinder your efforts. Don’t buy links on sites that seem spammy, or shady.

6. Offer Something Free – Free clipart, free templates, free web tools, anything free. People like free and WILL link to it !

7. Write a “How To” on a popular subject – A good “how to” will be read and people will “Digg” it, this will bring you even more traffic and back links.

8. List your site on the popular Social Bookmarking sites, such as Digg, Reddit, Spurl, De.lici.ous.

9. Write an authoritative article – Write a great article and submit it to the top article directories. Remember, the key to getting link backs this way is in your “about the author” box. Be sure you link back to your site and choose good anchor tags !

10. Pay a Link Builder – If you just don’t think you have the time, energy or motivation to do all the steps above you can always hire a professional link builder. Professional link builders will charge based on the amount of submissions they do for you usually. Do yourself a favor and check references before hiring any link builder, you do not want to hire someone who submits your site to thousands of free for all links pages, these are considered link farms and will not benefit your site in any way.

After a lot of hard works put together with your valuable time, you could have found your site running and you might have felt like your dream turned true. You might also have designed the site with a perfect layout and the niche which was expected to be loved by more people. But you could have soon realized that you are getting only very few visitors to your site. Do you ever wanted to know the reason? Continue reading to know why that is happening.

How many inbound links with good quality have you made to point back to your site? Without links, obviously no traffic is going to reach out your site. So initially you need to pay for links by starting a paid campaign using AdWords at Google.com. Or if you don’t want to spend for paid links, then you need to wait for the Google search engine to index your website and provide the page rank for your website naturally.

But to get ranked high by Google you need to do search engine optimization (SEO). SEO consumes lot of time and certainly needs efforts. But if you try to do SEO without any knowledge or experience, then you may end up by wasting your time with worthless non-working method.

So the best option is to hire a SEO specialist. But again there lies two problems. First one is that the SEO experts are too expensive and the second one is that there are lots of fake experts.

But at this stage you don’t have enough time to think creating link. Better you start doing link exchange campaign in the quality and niche relevant websites.

So you are wondering how to make quality links right? There are lots of options available to do this. One such method is to write articles and distribute them. You need to distribute minimum of 10 articles everyday. This will be the best option for you if you are a good writer and have a fair amount of time to spend for this everyday.

The main advantage of this is that it is free and already proved its worth. But there are certain things you need to remember while distributing an article. The most important thing is that your content should not be a duplicate content. Incase your articles is found to be duplicate by the search engine then your article will not be indexed by the search engine. Then you will not be getting back links through that article.

So your article needs to be unique for each directory you are submitting to. But the bitter truth about this article submission technique is that the article writing is really boring and hard to do on everyday basis.

Another option for link building is the link exchange directories. Here you need to have a good powerful script to add such directories into your website. Using that you need to track the entire link exchange. When you are using this technique you need to be more careful as the other webmaster might delete your link without any notification to you.

You can download a good link exchange directory script at phplinkdirectory.com. Since this is a very popular one it will not be much difficult for you to find a theme that suits the template of your website. Even if it doesn’t suit your website then you can easily find a person to modify the tpl and php files for you to suit your website. Have a look at this website as it will certainly help you to get good amount of back links.

Another idea to get back link is to have a link exchange partners. Even though the inbound links will help you to get good ranking you still need to pay attention to the sites you are linking to. Always choose the websites that have good quality and good content and also make sure that it does not have more than a dozen outbound links in a page.

The link exchange involves lots of tricks and techniques. Let me share the details about the trick which I believe as the best. Create a new website or a blog and establish a link exchange directory on it. Then offer a 3 way links in it. I mean you add a link of a website on it and add the main website link to the website whose link is added to the new website. But make sure that you never add an outbound link to your main website. Please know that most of the webmasters have more number of sites. So never try to add all the eggs you have to a single basket.