Part I: Linking Practices That Will Hurt your Search Engine Rankings

admin    Google     Engine, Hurt, Linking, Part, Practices, Rankings, Search

Quality linking practices are encouraged by the major search engines as an acceptable way of improving site popularity, website traffic and help contribute to higher search engine rankings. As a webmaster you must be wary of engaging in poor linking practices that have the potential to strip your website of its ranking status on the major search engines Google, Yahoo and MSN.

In this two part Article Series we will firstly discuss those linking practices that will find your website penalized by the major search engines, with the most current controversy over ‘paid links’. Google has recently penalized several sites with ranking drops for violating its quality webmaster guidelines by selling paid links. This penalty can also be applied to those sites displaying ‘paid links’ that are considered spam or of low quality by the search engines and provide users with a poor browsing experience.

Not all paid linking will be penalized, the current focus tends to be on those links that are primarily being used to manipulate search engine rankings. Purchasing paid links may also affect your rankings if the originating site selling the links is considered to be a ‘bad neighborhood’ site by the major search engines, your site’s rankings can be affected by association. As a general rule, avoid companies selling links who are promoting paid links that are ‘hard to detect by a search engine’ and with the recent increase in the reporting of paid links to Google, their ranking algorithms are being adjusted to detect such paid links.

The advice from Google on paid links is that it’s okay to promote paid links that are aimed at increasing website traffic but are not being used to manipulate search engine rankings. If you are using paid links:-

• Add a ‘no follow attribute’ to the linking info (see Google for more info on how to do this).

• You can also redirect the links to an intermediate page that is blocked from the search engines with robots.txt file.

• Clearly define paid advertising links on your site to the search engines ie. with a ‘sponsored link’ title heading.

Another linking practice that is discouraged by the major search engines is using Link Farms to artificially increase a site’s link popularity. Link farms are usually classified as a website or web page that displays a series of links to other unrelated sites and displays no content of real value or interest to site visitors. These types of links pages are usually created by automated software programs and services. To avoid being caught linking to a ‘link farm’ vigorously check all link exchange requests and the reciprocal URL location of your link on their site. Link farms will be obvious in nature as no actual web content will be present for site visitors except links and often the link exchange will be represented as a ‘3 way link’ exchange.

‘3 Way Linking’ has been an emerging trend over the past 12 months and is designed to quickly boost the search engine rankings and online presence of the requesting link partners site by anonymously building link pages that have no direct link to them so that they can’t be penalized by the search engines for deceptive SEO practices. 3 Way Links are of little or no benefit to your site or your linking campaign as typically the third party site that your link is located on has no content relevance to your own site or worse still it is just a ‘link farm’. Once again your site’s search engine rankings can be penalized by association.

Check link exchange requests carefully as often 3 way linking practices are hidden in the link request, in some cases you may agree to a link exchange with a site whose content is similar to yours only to find that when the link exchange is completed that your link has been placed on a third party site. Often the site requesting the link exchange does not even have a links page set up on their site. 3 Way Links can also be represented as ‘triangular link exchanges’.

The final linking practice we will look at is ‘Cross Linking’. Excessively cross-linking sites of unrelated content can and will violate the quality webmaster guidelines of Google, Yahoo and MSN. This linking practice is generally used to artificially increase the number of links to a site and link popularity with the main aim of manipulating the search engine rankings. Even if you are the owner of multiple sites it is unwise to cross link them if the content of the sites is unrelated.

I came across a prime example of cross-linking recently when analyzing a potential new client’s site for SEO & website marketing recommendations. What I discovered was that their existing SEO provider had excessively cross-linked their site to all their other clients sites under the disguise of ‘site map’ pages which were not only numerous in quantity but also keyword stuffed. This practice has somehow gotten past the ranking algorithms of Google and Yahoo most likely because the pages were being represented as ‘site map’ pages however the site had been penalized by MSN with no rankings showing whatsoever.

The only way of bringing up the site on MSN was to type in the site’s direct URL address. The site owner was completely unaware of this breach which was explained away by this SEO company as the search engine results for MSN being inconclusive on the day they were searched for reporting purposes. To a novice, this explanation probably seems viable – so website owners be wary and don’t be afraid to ask questions as to why your site is not receiving rankings in at least the top 10 pages of the search engine results for Google, Yahoo & MSN especially if you are paying for professional SEO services. Avoid automated software being added to your site primarily for SEO purposes, organic search engine results are certainly achievable without the application of automated software which usually displays web pages of lower quality than your main web pages and certainly be wary of site maps being developed for your site in the format I have described above. These are generally placed in the footer of your home page with the words site map preceding them, followed by an A – Z listing of site map web pages. This doesn’t apply to software added to your site to record site statistics for performance analysis.

Positive linking practices will be discussed in Part 2 of this Article Series.

© Rosemary Donald, Rank1 Website Marketing 5th November, 2007

www.rank1websitemarketing.com

Google Reveals More Linking Secrets to Webmasters

admin    Google     Google, Linking, more, Reveals, Secrets, Webmasters

Copyright (c) 2008 Titus Hoskins

One of the most problematic and confusing issues most webmasters have with Google concerns linking. How your links are ranked? How you should link out? How you should construct your internal links? How you should get more inbound links? How many links should you have on a page? And the list of questions goes on…

Perhaps, the most annoying aspect for the struggling webmaster, has been Google’s secrecy in how it actually ranks links and pages. Google’s whole PageRank and Ranking Algorithm is so complex that no one can fully boast they understand how the whole system works.

Google’s ranking secrecy and complexity has probably been well-planned mainly because there are millions of webmasters who would like to “game” the Google Algorithm and achieve high keyword rankings through manipulation with so-called “black-hat” SEO techniques and reverse engineering.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if this whole secrecy and complexity is more of a smokescreen rather than an actual deception on Google’s part. What if the keys to the kingdom are actually yours for the taking? What if the solution is hiding in plain sight for everyone to see? What if the secret to high rankings in Google is not a secret at all? Wouldn’t that be a hoot!

Actually, that’s not a far-fetched assumption to make, mainly because many of Google’s linking policies and recommendations are freely given by Google. Whether you can believe Google is actually giving you the goods is another issue that we’ll put on the back-burner for another day; but for now, Google’s advice on link building is rather generous and informative.

As a part of Links Week held recently, Google’s Maile Ohye gave some pointers on what Google is looking for and how it does its index ranking. No big surprise that content and inbound links are the two most important factors. This is what most SEO experts have been saying for years.

A site’s content is one of the main factors. Therefore, you should have a compelling site with interesting information and/or offer quality products, entertainment, opinions…

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

“One of the strongest ranking factors is my site’s content. Additionally, perhaps my site is also linked from three sources — however, one inbound link is from a spammy site. As far as Google is concerned, we want only the two quality inbound links to contribute to the PageRank signal in our ranking.”

“Given the user’s query, over 200 signals (including the analysis of the site’s content and inbound links as mentioned above) are applied to return the most relevant results to the user.”

“As many of you know, relevant, quality inbound links can affect your PageRank (one of many factors in our ranking algorithm). And quality links often come naturally to sites with compelling content or offering a unique service.”

(End Quote)

Then Maile Ohye explained further how to create unique and compelling content for your site:

(Quoting Maile Ohye)

- Start a blog: make videos, do original research, and post interesting stuff on a regular basis. If you’re passionate about your site’s topic, there are lots of great avenues to engage more users.

- Teach readers new things, uncover new news, be entertaining or insightful, show your expertise, interview different personalities in your industry and highlight their interesting side. Make your site worthwhile.

- Participate thoughtfully in blogs and user reviews related to your topic of interest. Offer your knowledgeable perspective to the community.

- Provide a useful product or service. If visitors to your site get value from what you provide, they’re more likely to link to you.

(End Quote)

SEO experts have been telling webmasters for years that creating valuable, unique, relevant useful content is one of the best ways to get your site and pages highly ranked in Google. If you create valuable content then other sites will want to link to you naturally.

Linking out to other sites should be done in a “common sense” manner and it’s a way of offering value to your visitor’s experience. We expect helpful relevant links when we visit other sites since it’s a natural way a good quality site should work; so be careful of linking out to spammy sites that only offer pages of links with very little or no unique content.

There are several things every prudent webmaster should be checking like making sure your site hasn’t been hacked and hidden links placed on your site without your knowledge; those with WordPress blogs should be installing the latest security measures and updates. Make sure you keep checking all your outbound links regularly since you may initially link out to a valuable resource, but over time this page may be closed or replaced with one of those spammy-links-holding pages. It can happen to the best of us.

What has confused things lately is all the “link buying” which Google greatly discourages and has shown its displeasure by de-ranking many paid directories. The size of your “wallet” shouldn’t be the determining factor in how pages and content are ranked. If you’re selling a link, it should have the “no-follow” tag so that it doesn’t pass PageRank along and confuse the system. Policing or deciding what is or what is not a “paid link” has become a major problem for the search engines, including Google.

You should not have more than “100 links on a page” as this can overload the search engine robots that regularly crawl the web, indexing pages. Likewise, your site’s “linking architecture” should be natural and easy for both your visitors and the robots to follow. Make sure your important pages are no more than a few clicks away from your homepage.

As to interior linking, the two main points being: Intuitive Navigation for your visitors and Crawlable Text Links for the search engine robots. Use descriptive anchor text links that explain your content to your visitors. The anchor text is the underlined clickable part of the link and many SEO experts suggest you place your keywords or variations of them in your anchor text.

Make sure your site is transparent. Do not use “link cloaking” on your site. Make sure what your visitor sees is what the robots are indexing. Use a 301 Redirect if you have permanently moved any webpages. Again, there is stressed the need for a sitemap as this can be very helpful for both your visitors and robots to see and find all your valuable content. Make sure you have a sitemap and all your important pages are listed on it.

One final note, many professional webmasters and marketers don’t worry about PageRank as much as they are concerned with SERPs. Getting those top rankings for their sites in the search engine results is what really matters. Again, quality content and building quality links play an important role in achieving those top spots and maybe Google has already given you the formula for getting them. Maybe, maybe not.

Top Five Internal Linking Tactics To Get Top Google Rankings

admin    Google     Five, Google, Internal, Linking, Rankings, Tactics

If you’re a website owner and are not following these five tactics for correctly linking your website together then you’re losing Google traffic as you read this. Internal linking is the links on your website that point to other pages within your same website. External linking is when you link to another website.

There are things you can do when developing or re-working your internal linking structure. If you carry out the following tactics, you’re going to achieve two things. First, you’ll make your website better from a user’s perspective. Second, you’ll rank better in Google. And it’s no coincidence that Google rewards you for doing things that make the website user’s experience easier and better. In fact, the most important thing I can recommend is that you create, design and link your website together is a way that benefits the visitor first. Your visitors are most important, not Google rankings.

And remember, links to your site (whether from other sites or from pages within your own site) help your rankings.

1) Add links in your navigation or footer as text links to all your important pages and main sections.

This is a very easy and an extremely effective tactic that not all sites do, and even less do for maximum results. This is the first thing I look for when reviewing a website for a client. Unfortunately, sometimes artsy Web designers add cool buttons, which are images, to all the main sections of the site, but neglect to include text links as well. Or a programmer decides to make the website’s navigation a dynamic drop down menu in DHTML or JavaScript but forget to include text links to the same pages represented in the menus. Search engines cannot follow image links or links created in JavaScript, they can only follow simple text links, so be sure you add them to your site as well.

So if you want search engines to visit and index (or record) ALL your website’s pages, be sure there are text links pointing to all the main sections of your site and to all your important pages.

2) Use of the rel=”nofollow” HTML tag.

This is fairly simple. Google created this tag which tells them NOT to count the link in their search engine ranking algorithm when used on a link. There’s debate that maybe Google does count them a little, or will some day in the future. But for now, this tag does greatly decrease a link’s value in Google’s eyes. Therefore, consider using this tag on some of your links within your site. For example, let’s say you have a homepage and then create two inner pages, and that’s the extent of the site. Let’s further say that you add a link to both pages on your homepage.

If your homepage has some external links pointing to it, then it has some value in regards to Google’s ranking system. When you link to each of your two new pages within your site from your homepage, each page gets only 50% of the value the homepage has. (This is all measured in Page Rank). Let’s then say that your first inner page is the one you want to rank well in the Google, but you don’t care if your second inner page even gets found by Google or ranked. You could add the nofollow tag to the second link on your homepage, thereby giving the first inner page 100% of the homepage’s value.

Think of the implications. Imagine if you had a website with hundreds or thousands of pages and used the nofollow tag throughout. To understand how to implement this tag is, do a search in Google such as “how to add a nofollow tag to link”.

Finally, if you have pages such as a privacy page, terms page, checkout pages or contact pages that you don’t care if they rank well in Google, be sure to use the nofollow tag when creating internal links to these pages.

3) Use descriptive & different phrases to point to the same inner page

The words that are in the text of a link (also known as the anchor text) affect your search engine rankings. For example, the anchor text in the two links above is “Your Website”. If enough of these links that were on quality and valuable sites, including your own website’s inner pages, pointed to the same page, it would eventually rank well in Google when someone searches for the phrase “your website”.

Therefore, be sure to make the anchor text in all your internal links the phrases you want the pages to be found for in Google.

Going back to the number 1 tactic above, you would be far better off making the anchor text in all your footer links as descriptive as possible. If you want to rank well in Google for “affordable Red widgets” then make the anchor text “affordable Red widgets”.

Finally, vary your anchor text when pointing to the same page within your website. For instance, on some of your pages you could link to your Red Widgets page with the anchor text of “Red widgets”, then on other pages link to it using “affordable Red widgets” and then maybe use “widgets that are Red”. This allows you to get the page ranked for multiple terms and helps the user since you’re being descriptive and making your anchor text better match the content of the page it’s on.

4) Make links in your content

If you have text on your site, make some of the words within the text links that point to other pages within your website. For instance, if you have an article about Red widgets, or a page that describes how great your Red widgets are, make the first or second occurrence of the phrase “Red widgets” in the text a link that points to your Red Widgets page.

5) Create breadcrumbs at the top of every page

This looks something like this: Home – Products – Red Widgets

Each of words between the hyphens (which are also often greater-than signs) above should be links to their corresponding pages within the site. This helps your website visitors know where they are in relation to the rest of the site. It helps orientate site visitors. Anything you can do that helps your visitors’ experience is something you ought to consider doing. This also helps search engines spider your website more easily as well. Finally, making breadcrumbs creates more internal links to your pages, thus helping your rankings as well.

By following these top five internal linking tactics, you’ll be far ahead of the competition, you’ll rank better in Google and other search engines and you’ll be making your website visitors’ lives easier.

Top 3 Google Linking Strategies of 2008

admin    Google     2008, Google, Linking, Strategies

To get the best ranking results on Google you need to use the best linking strategies. With so many methods to choose from, this is easier said than done. Fortunately, the information in this article can take you through everything you need to know to have hundreds of top quality inbound links in no time flat!

First let’s start with getting inbound links from directories. A link from a directory gets a lot of weight from Google because they value it as a form of endorsement. You’ve probably used some directories yourself, like Yahoo. Or maybe you’ve used some without even knowing it, like The Open Directory Project (DMOZ.org) that powers many of the most popular search engines, including Google!

Each directory is different and offers different options for obtaining links to your site. Here’s a rundown of how different directories will link to your site…

1.) Free Submission: Just like it sounds. No charges for inclusion. DMOZ.org is the best one and powers Google, AOL and even Yahoo Search (not Yahoo directory.) Just be sure to follow their submission guidelines and pick the most appropriate sub category possible for inclusion. This is extremely important.

2.) Paid Submissions: They charge a fee to review the submitted link and possibly list the page. You might pay a few dollars one time, a recurring annual fee or as much as the $300 that Yahoo charges for commercial site review.

3.) Reciprocal Link: These usually require you to link to the directory before they will even consider linking back.

4.) Featured Link: Your link gets a premium spot that you pay for.

5.) Featured Homepage Link: This is a featured link on the homepage. As you’ve probably guessed, this can get real expensive.

Yahoo is easily the most popular (and most expensive) but it’s not the best. It’s been my experience that a free listing with DMOZ.org is worth more than a paid listing with Yahoo. Even though Yahoo is more popular as a directory that people actually visit, DMOZ is much more popular with search engines and carries a lot of weight. A “vote” from DMOZ is a big deal indeed.

Here are the five top directories offering free listings. Some even offer inexpensive expedited listing services or featured listings:

1.) dmoz.com

2.) directoryvault.com

3.) domaining.in

4.) getlistedrightnow.com

5.) visitalink.com

There’s a site that keeps an updated list of directories, but not all are free. You have to visit each to see if there is any cost. Go to http://www.topwebsitetips.com/FreeLinks-Directories.aspx and scroll down to the drop down box at the bottom of the page. Select your desired Google PR and search. If you want to avoid getting niche directories in the results, check the “General Directories Only” box after your first return set and rerun the search.

As a second option, you can also consider paying a submission service to get your site listed in the major directories. There are plenty that will do it for a reasonable fee. Just be sure they do the following three things:

1.) Manual submission only

2.) Verify that your site is not already listed

3.) Provide proof of submission (usually screen captures)

Just search Google for “directory submission service” and you’ll get plenty of options. I’ve used http://www.seonext.com/directory-submission.html in the past with good success. They offer a “slow submission” service that makes your link building appear more natural to Google and other top search engines.

And finally, there is no better way to get quality links than from a traditional reciprocal link campaign. This can be a time consuming step without automated software, but is very important.

Here are ten steps to a successful reciprocal linking campaign:

1.) List the keywords you want to be found for.

2.) Write a standardized form letter you can easily customize for each site (customization tips at the end.)

3.) Run a search on Google for each keyword and jot down the URL for each match returned (not just the homepage but the URL for the actual page you want the link from, which is the one that came up in the search.)

4.) Remove all direct competitors from the list.

5.) Go back through your list and find the contact info for each site. Record this information.

6.) Create a link to each page you want to get a link from. This should be from the most appropriate page on your site, not the homepage. Do not exceed 10 outbound links per page at most. The fewer, the better.

7.) Send the customized email with the considerations outlined below.

8.) Verify their backlinks.

9.) Remove any outbound links that do not reciprocate within a month or so.

10.) Check your inbound links every couple of weeks. Make sure you are still getting the links you earned and that the people linking to you have not moved you to a less desirable page.

Reciprocal Link Email Tips:

A.) Address the email to a person by name if possible.

B.) Start with a complimentary statement about what you like on their site.

C.) Introduce yourself and your site.

D.) Lead into why you feel your site is a good, non competing match (list benefits for them and their visitors.)

E.) Mention that you have already linked to their site and hope they feel a reciprocal link will be beneficial. Provide the URL to the page you linked from.

F.) Explain why you linked from the page you did and the anchor text you used to show you understand link strategy.

G.) Request that if they link back they use one of your anchor text suggestions along with the exact URL you want them to link to.

H.) Offer to change the link anchor text of their URL if they wish.

I.) Thank them genuinely for the time and sign with your first name to make it more personal and natural.

You can do all of this manually or invest in a good piece of software to do the difficult and time consuming work for you. Many SEO professionals (myself included) use SEO Elite (http://www.SEOeliteWeb.com) because it finds the best link partners, automatically gets their contact info and even manages entire campaigns. It’s also a link verification system and search engine rank checker so it covers all of my SEO needs nicely ($167.)

So whether you do the work by hand or invest in a time saving “instant gratification” SEO tool, the information in this article can help you to the top of Google in record time. Good luck!

Surveys Show Lack of Knowledge on Deep Linking Adversely Affecting Sem and Web Directories

admin    SEM     Adversely, Affecting, Deep, Directories, Knowledge, Lack, Linking, Show, Surveys

For the Internet and World Wide Web to survive in today’s so called Web 2.0 climate it needs to preserve the integrity of what made the web work in the first place and that is take care of links and their various usages.

Deep Linking as far as the World Wide Web is concerned is described as making a point or hyperlink that points to a specific page or image on another website and accessing that URL directly as opposed to going into the website via the homepage or main page.

Now in its basic form the World Wide Web is, as the name suggests a connection of inter-related computers and websites connected to each other by links and the whole thing comes together and manifests itself resembling that of a spiders web hence the name…web. With me so far?

Surveys have shown recently that an apparent lack of knowledge with regard to proper linking and deep linking especially could have an adverse effect on the way that web sites and ultimately Search Engines report and classify data.

The problem lies with the fact that Web Masters and Web Directories brought up in the ways of what is now called Web 1.0 that is to say, the old fashioned way are now becoming fewer and fewer with more and more newer webmasters using automatic technology to create and monitor links pages.

The knock on effect on this is that if only one page of a site is linked externally and the internal linking structure of the site is not correct or doesn’t function properly then there is no way that the Search Engines can classify or rank a site properly and hence the downgrading of facilities and pages.

Correct usage and knowledge of linking “netiquette” and best practice will go a long way to solving the problem but today’s webmaster is no longer prepared to wait the time to “learn their craft” rather relying on automated systems to do this work for them and hence the overall levels of bad practice and ignorance are rising.

Now in recent years the tendency has arisen for website owners to control the points at which websites are accessed by the search engine’s spiders and bots and therein lies the problem.

It was at this point that everyone lost the plot big time and in their haste to control what was spidered and when, a lot of webmasters virtually killed their points of access and entry as far as good old Googlebot, Yahoo slurp and Msnbot were concerned and as such it has come to pass that they now have a much greatly reduced number of their web pages indexed and the various knock on effects that these bring.

The answer boys and girls? Open up your websites more, let spiders index pages deep in your site and if the truth be know, if you are a believer in the whole concept of “Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI)” or “Siloing” then actually your own deep internal links correctly managed can not only do you the power of good as far as Directories are concerned but can help you in your own internal SEM as well.

Easy really?

Page Ranking These Very Linking Exercises Do not Help Your Page Ranking Popularity

admin    Google     Exercises, Help, Linking, Page, Popularity, Ranking, These, Very

After getting to +now that link popularity is the most importanT factor that seabch enginEs cnnsider when deciding your Page rank, almost everyone has taken to posting pheir back links alL over the int%rnet. However, gainIng credible link popularity that increases your page rank is really not as easy as it sounds anD most people who do not know much about how Page rank works keep creating 4ext links that are either useless, or even harmful for their webpage. In order to make link popularity work for you, it is important to avoid the most common link building mistakes.

1. Creating Links on Unrelated Pages. Search engines nowadays are smart enough to decipher whether your link is relevant to the users of the webpage that they are placed on or not. So if you are putting the text links of your WebPages which are related to cooking on websites that deal with high end electronic goods, wrestling or real estate, you can be sure that these links will be trashed by the search engine, doing zilch for your Page rank. So create links on sites that have related content. For example, if you have a cooking related website, placing links on home improvement, restaurant, recipe and kitchen equipment sites will be helpful.

2. Creating Text Links That Proclaim, “Click Here”. Google search engine spiders use the text on your hyperlink to determine what your website is all about and this plays an important role in determining both your Page rank as well as your search engine rankings. By putting hyperlinks that simply say “ click here for more information” or “know more here”, you are telling the search engines that your website is about clicking and knowing more and that is where you will be ranked high instead of getting high search engine rankings for your own domain. Make it a point to use relevant keywords in your text links.

3. Creating Links on High Page rank Pages That Already Have Hundreds of Links. Yes, it is true that the higher the PR of a page linking to you, the higher will be the value assigned to the link by the search engines and the greater will be your page rank. This is because the value or points that you get from a page that links back to you is determined by the formula—page rank of linking page / number of links on that page. But it is equally important to pay attention to the denominator of the formula, since a highly ranked page with lots of back links may end up giving you lower value than a page with lower rank but lesser links.

4. Placing Links on Dynamic Pages. Web pages that are generated dynamically take ages to get indexed, and in all probability, a text link on such a page will never help in increasing your page rank. Identify dynamic pages by URLs with special symbols in them (&, etcetera) and save your time by not posting any text links to your site on such pages.

5. Creating Links On Pages Those SE Spiders Cannot Crawl On. The whole point of building link popularity for increasing page rank is to make your site accessible to search engine spiders. However, search engine bots have not become smart enough to read pages generated by Flash or JavaScript. They are also unable to read text links placed within frames, so it is a complete waste of time creating back links on sites that are either Flash generated or framed, since these links would be totally ignored by search engine spiders.

Why is Linking Important for Your Page Rank

admin    Google     Important, Linking, Page, Rank

Linking is one of the biggest factors in any search engine marketing strategy. In fact, you are better off spending your time acquiring inbound links than submitting your site to search engines.

Apart from being valuable with regard to search engines linking also helps establish you as an expert in your field, by linking to relevant content on other sites It shows that you are well read in the area of your expertise. Linking in this manner is more or less similar to placing references to other people’s work. In fact, it has been argued that by placing their materials on the Internet (without stating expressly their objection to external links), copyright owners grant ‘implied licenses to other users to link to them. As the founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee points out, there is no reason to have to ask for permission to link to other documents. Sites still need back links to rank high in SERP. (SERP or Search engine results page is the result returned when searching a key word. ) For speed o development, buying links from high ranking sites is an option. This is a very expensive method and I don’t recommend it unless you have very deep pockets. However you may have no alternative for building fast quality links unless you can offer high value information on your website so that people will not mind adding a link to your site.

Search engines, particularly Google, use link popularity to help evaluate and rank your website. Link popularity refers to the number, quality and relevance of inbound links from other websites to yours. they recognize the number of incoming links in its algorithm that determines placement rankings, they also look for quality Eg. page rank, the more links a website has the better, but the quality I think is more important than the amount. which may explain why you may appear at position 123 while your competitor appears on page 1. The more page rank a linking page has the more authority it lends to you If you use a reciprocal linking service you are probably wasting your time, the sites that you are linked too are from too wide a range of subjects to have any relevance or authority.

Another factor to consider is deep linking, where the in coming link goes directly to an internal page rather than your home page. For example you may have an article that is on yoursite .com /articles/ happydays.html A link from an outside site direct to that page would be deep linking as it is on the third layer of your site. Deep linking is good for your site as the overall page rank takes into account not only the links to your home page but also the total links to the site.

Google has become skilled at detecting un-natural linking patterns; links to sites that exist only to generate back links for the purpose of improving page ranking. Because of this many SEO experts are going back to fundamentals and using techniques like article writing to develop natural links What is a natural link ? It is an incoming link, it is not recipricol, and it has value (pagerank). If you build enough quality and relevant links to your site you’re site will still have traffic before, during, and after algorithm changes.