SEO One-way Web Links

I’ve only seen five strategies that really work consistently for
getting hundreds of links.

Less Effective One-Way Link Strategies

Yet there’s perennial interest in alternative linking
strategies. They range from bad to OK, but none offer as much
potential as the five major ways of getting links.

Link farms never seem to die. The latest variations try to pass
themselves off as viral
marketing, but are really a sort of endless pyramid scheme:
you link to me, so I link to someone else, who links to someone
else, and on and on down the line. Link farms can get you
delisted from search engine indexes, so don’t even try them.

Affiliates can provide you with one-way inbound links if you use
affiliate software that links directly to your site rather than
through a redirect. But many, many affiliates are now placing
all their affiliate links in redirects of their own invention,
to help protect their commissions from pirates who will simply
apply to the program themselves to get a discount.

Posting to web forums and blogs regularly will get you one-way
inbound links, but they’ll only have search-engine value a small
percentage of the time. Many blogs and bulletin boards use
search-engine-unfriendly dynamic file formats, automatically
encase links in script, or use robot instructions to prevent
spiders from following links.

Many one-way inbound
linking strategies fall into the
great-if-you-are-lucky-enough-to-get-it category, such as
winning a web award or being featured on a high-PageRank website
just for being so great.

Other one-way incoming link strategies are in the
this-will-take-forever-to-get-anywhere category, such as
offering to provide testimonials to all your vendors in exchange
for a link to your site. (Hint: If you can get more than twenty
links that way, you probably need to simplify your supply
chain.)

Now, on to the five major ways of getting large numbers of
one-way inbound links. Some are better than others, but they all
have more potential than some of the more madcapped strategies.
Of course, none is a good strategy all on its own. You have to
understand all five strategies in order to really gain a
distinct advantage in the one-way link hunt.

1. Waiting for Inbound Links

If you have good content you will eventually get one-way inbound
links naturally, without asking. Organic, freely given links are
an essential part of any SEO strategy. But you
cannot rely on them, for two reasons:

Unfortunately, “eventually” can be a very long time.

Worse, there is a vicious cycle: you can’t get search engine
traffic, or other non-paid traffic, without inbound links; yet
without inbound links or search engine traffic, how is anyone
going to find you to give you inbound links?

2. Triangulating for Inbound Links

Search engines will have a tough time dampening reciprocal links
if the reciprocation is not direct. To get links to one website
you offer in exchange a link from another website you also
control. This would seem to be a mostly foolproof way of
defeating the link-dampening ambitions of Google and the rest.
If you have more than one website, you probably are already
employing this linking method. There are only a few drawbacks:

You need to have more than one website in the same general
category of interest or the links won’t be relevant.

The work required to set up this kind of arrangement and verify
compliance is not insignificant. The process cannot be automated
to the same extent as direct one-to-one reciprocal linking.

As with traditional reciprocal links, a very big drawback is
that the links are mostly on “Resources” pages that are just
lists of links. There’s only a small chance of getting
significant traffic from these links. Plus, any “Resource” page
may well eventually become an easy target for link dampening, if
that hasn’t happened already.

3. Submitting to Directories

They are the legendary fairy lands of SEO: PageRank-passing,
no-fee-charging, and actually well-run directories of relevant
links. Yes, they really do exist. An SEO acquaintance tells me
he knows 200 good ones just off the top of his head. Plus, there
are other kinds of directories: directories of affiliate
programs, of websites using a certain content management system,
of websites whose owners are members of this or that group, of
websites accepting PayPal, etc. etc.

Ah, a link in a PageRank-passing link directory: it’s a good
deal if you can get it. But let’s say you do get links from all
200 such directories and a hundred more from the little niche
directories–now what?

4. Paying for Inbound Links

Buying and selling text links on high-PageRank web pages has
become big business. Buying good traffic-generating “clean”
links is a great alternative to pay-per-click advertising, which
confers no SEO benefit. But, there are a number of pitfalls of
relying primarily on paid links for SEO:

The cost of the hundreds of links required for substantial
search engine traffic can become prohibitive.

As soon as you stop paying, you lose your link–you are
essentially renting rather than owning, with no “link equity”
building up.

Google is actively trying to dampen the impact of paid links on
rankings, as revealed in various patent filings. A website can
try to mask the fact that the links are paid, but how well it
does that is out of your control.

Given Google’s mission to dampen paid links’ effectiveness, paid
link buyers have an interest in verifying that a potential paid
link partner is “passing PageRank.” But identifying appropriate
PageRank-passing paid link partners is quite a task in itself.

Google also has a stated mission of dampening the value of any
“artificial” links. Having most of your links on PageRank 3 or
higher web pages would seem to be a dead give-away that your
links are “artificial,” since the vast majority of web pages
(note: not necessarily websites, but their pages) are PageRank 1
or lower. Meanwhile, buying PageRank 0 or 1 links would have so
little impact on a site’s PageRank that it would not be worth
the expense.

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.

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.

Everyone is concerned about their Google rankings. An algorithm change or an update can leave many a webmaster in tears.

However, I often like to sneak in through the back door. So today I’m going to reveal to you some of my Google secrets. After you look closely, you will find that there is much more to Google than meets the eye and I want you to take advantage of every resource. So, let’s look behind the scenes into Google’s lab.

Google Base

Google Base was launched in November of 2005. Google base describes itself as “a place where you can add all types of information that we’ll host and make searchable online”. Now, if that isn’t a webmaster’s dream, I don’t know what is.

Your item could be almost anything: your products, research papers, articles, or press releases. You can describe all of your items so that you can zone in on your targeted visitor. In addition, your items may also get included in the main Google search index, Froogle, and Google Local.

Anyone with a Google account can use this service, so why not give it a try. Google base is the perfect way to get an additional audience for your content.
To find out more about Google Base, visit http://base.google.com/base/about.html

Google Local

Getting your products into Google local can put your items in front of some serious buyers. People often go to Google Local looking for a specific item or service in a particular geographic area. So, if you own a small business, Google Local is the perfect opportunity to increase your reach without spending lots of advertising dollars.

Froogle

Froogle offers searchers a directory of products by category, a searchable index of online products, and the ability to narrow searches by price range. By putting your products into Froogle, you can get some very targeted, qualified traffic to your website.

So, how do you get into Froogle? Well, Google has already been actively searching the web for online product catalogs. For many online merchants, there’s a good chance that Froogle already has some of your products listed.

However, one of the best ways to get into the Froogle directory is by providing them with a data feed that lists your products, descriptions, pricing, and URLs. This allows you to fully optimize your listings.

To get the most out of Froogle, you’ll want to make your product description clear and enticing. Create titles that not only have targeted keywords, but also encourage the visitor to click-through to your site.

Once they are at your site, it is important to upsell and cross-sell. Otherwise you will be throwing potential profits down the drain. Make the most out of every Froogle referral.

When someone does decide to make a purchase from you, be sure to capture their name and email address. This way you can develop a relationship with them and offer them related products in the future.

Now, onto a facet of Google that you certainly won’t want to miss out on.

Google Blog Search

This is one of the best ways to get some additional listings in Google. If you have a website, why not start a blog. By starting a blog, you can be indexed on a number of blog searches, including Google Blog search. This area of marketing is largely untapped, so it is the perfect time to get your particular niche grounded in these specialty search engines.

To get your blog listed you simply need to ping an updating service such as weblogs.com. It’s as simple as that. If you are using Wordpress, you can set it up to where your blog pings the major services every time you make a post.

You can have multiple listings in the Google Blog Search because they list specific posts as well as entire blogs.

Google Video

Google Video allows you to have your very own tv show on one of the largest search engines on the internet. This is a form of multimedia that is certainly gaining popularity online. Right now it is in a growth stage and it’s one of the perfect times to get in and be one of the first one’s in your particular market. Videos are also a great selling point if you have a product that can be demonstrated. With Google video, you can now have your very own infomercial indexed in the search engines. Of course, you’ll want to provide some great content too. To check out this new technology, go to http://video.google.com

Google News

Want to get your article and even your picture into Google News? Well, it’s really not that hard. The first step is to go to www.americanchronicle.com, Scroll down to the very bottom of the page and click on the link that says “submit work”. From there you can sign up to be a contributor.

If accepted as a contributor, you will then be able to submit articles along with a picture. Many of their articles are syndicated on Google News and will be available to the millions of searchers who go to Google News each and every day.

If you are looking to get your press release into Google News, all you have to do is submit your press release to prleap. As you can see, there’s certainly no need to pay money to get into Google News.

Now that you know about the many faces of Google, you will be able to use many of these hidden tactics to your advantage. You see, there are so many people who just don’t put in the extra effort required get exceptional results.

This puts you at a great advantage over atleast 70% of webmasters online today.