I
have spent a lot of time reading and researching
about search engines and linking procedures
and the importance of both. To say the
least there are any number of theories
and programs available to get your site
ranked near the top and how to pick and
choose who you want to link to and with.
I
have chosen to publish and promote the
articles and programs of Sumantra Roy
because I find his methods logical and
easy to understand. I feel confident that
if you read and you use his methods you
will gain more success for your online
business.
To
start, I have published two articles and
sign-up forms for two e-courses which
will give you better insight into how
your site can be in the top search engine
rankings. Once you have mastered these
two courses you will, not only, understand
the process better but will be able to
fine tune your efforts.
Sumantra's
methods are not the only viable resources
available but they are certainly some
of the best. In any event, I would appreciate
any comments or opinions you may have
on the subjects. You may contact me, Douglas
Mackie, at my personal email address riverbanktraders@gmail.com
The
Tools of the Trade
By
Sumantra Roy
Before
you start optimizing your site for the
search engines, you would need to arm
yourself with some tools to help you.
What follows is a brief review of 4 software
programs that we find invaluable when
we are optimizing our clients' sites.
Wordtracker:
The first and most important step in any
search engine positioning campaign is
identifying the keywords for which you
should optimize your site. WordTracker's
keyword research service is the only one
on the Internet that will provide a comprehensive
and powerful database of the most popular
keywords in your industry. It has features
that all other keyword research tools
lack - for instance, it will help you
identify related keywords that you would
otherwise never have thought of, it differentiates
between singular and plural keywords and
tells you which version is more popular,
it helps you identify popular mis-spelled
keywords (which generally have very little
competition) in your industry etc. It
has a free trial version which will help
you identify a few keywords. However,
we recommend that you subscribe to its
paid service as otherwise, you will not
be able to discover quite a few keywords
that can turn out to be extremely valuable
to you. You can find more information
on WordTracker at
http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?5323&wordtracker/
Optilink:
Link popularity has quickly become one
of the most important factors that influence
your rankings in the search engines. What
is important is not only the number of
sites linking to you, but the quality
and relevancy of the sites that are linking
to you. If you are trying to improve the
link popularity of your site, until now,
there has been no easy way of checking
the quality and relevancy of sites that
are linking to you or the quality and
relevancy of sites that you are thinking
of asking for links from. You could have
done it manually, but it would take a
tremendous amount of time. However, a
new software product called Optilink automates
this process to a large extent. In addition
to doing an excellent job in helping you
determine the quality of sites that already
link to you or might link to you, it also
does the following:
i)
analyzes the link structures of your top
ranking competitors and tells you why
they rank well, so that you can emulate
the same tactics that your top ranking
competitors are using.
ii)
allows you to do "what if" analysis
- it tells you what sort of rankings you
can expect if you adopt a particular linking
strategy.
iii)
monitor the sites that you have exchanged
links with to ensure that they are still
linking to you and are linking to you
the way you want them to.
If
you are thinking of improving the link
popularity of your site, or are already
doing so, we highly recommend that you
obtain this product before you proceed.
You can find more information on Optilink
at http://www.1stSearchRanking.com/t.cgi?5323&optilink/
Link
popularity, i.e. the number of sites which
are linking to your site, is an increasingly
important factor as far as search engine
placement is concerned. Other things remaining
the same, more the number of links to
your site, higher will be its ranking.
What
is important is not only the number of
links to your site, but also the types
of sites which are linking to you. A link
from a site which is related to yours
is more valuable than a link from an unrelated
site.
In
this article, I explore different methods
by which you can improve the link popularity
of your site. I start with a method that
you shouldn't bother using, then go on
to the moderately effective methods, and
then end with the most effective methods
you can use to boost the link popularity
of your site.
1)
Submitting your site to Free For All (FFA)
pages
A
common misconception among many Internet
marketers is that while FFA pages may
not directly bring in traffic to your
site, it will help to improve the link
popularity of your site, and hence, will
indirectly bring in traffic through the
search engines.
Nothing
could be further from the truth. Most
FFA pages can contain only a certain number
of links at a time. This means that when
you submit your site to a FFA page, your
site will be placed at the top of the
page. However, as more and more people
submit their sites to the FFA page, your
site will be pushed down, and finally,
when it reaches the bottom of the page,
it will be removed.
Now,
since you can bet that plenty of other
people are also submitting their sites
to the FFA pages, your site will remain
in these pages for only a short span of
time. Hence, in order to ensure that the
search engines see your site if and when
they come to spider the FFA page, you
will need to ensure that you submit your
site to these FFA pages on a regular basis
- at least once a week.
Even
if you used an automatic submission program
to do it, can you imagine a worse way
to spend your time and/or money? Furthermore,
many search engines recognize these pages
which only contains links to other sites
as FFA pages and may completely ignore
them. And while I haven't yet seen any
evidence that submitting to the FFA pages
will actually penalize your site, there
is every possibility that this might happen
in the future.
Hence,
when it comes to FFA pages, my advice
is simple: don't even think about them.
2)
Starting an Awards Program
A
moderately effective method of improving
the link popularity of your site is to
start an awards program. You can have
web sites which are related to yours apply
for an award from your site. The sites
which win the award get the chance to
display the logo for your award. This
logo is linked to your site, preferably
to a page which contains more information
on the award.
If
you publish a newsletter, consider declaring
the winners in your newsletter. You can
also perform a review of the winners'
sites in your newsletter. This adds useful
content to your newsletter and also gives
more webmasters the incentive to apply
for your award, since you may review their
sites in your newsletter. This also gives
them the incentive to subscribe to your
newsletter to see if they win the award.
Make
sure that you give awards to only those
sites which deserve to win. If you give
your award to sites which don't deserve
it, your award will have little credibility,
which will, in turn, hurt the credibility
of your company. Furthermore, make sure
that the logo you design for the award
looks professional. If it doesn't, not
many webmasters will want to display it
in their sites.
3)
Giving testimonials
This
may sound a bit unusual, but giving testimonials
for products or services which you find
useful can be another moderately effective
way of improving the link popularity of
your site. If you really like a product,
simply write to the company and tell them
why you liked the product so much and
how it has helped you. Chances are, the
company will write back to you to thank
you for your comments and will ask you
for permission to display your comments
in their web site. Tell the company that
you have no problems if they publish your
comments, but request them to add a link
to your site along with the testimonial.
There is every possibility that the company
will agree since publishing the URL of
your web site gives more credibility to
the testimonial.
Of
course, please don't go about giving testimonials
to every company you can locate just because
it will improve your link popularity :-)
4)
Posting to Message Boards and Discussion
Lists
Another
moderately effective method of increasing
the link popularity of your site is to
post to online message boards. At the
end of every message that you post, you
can sign off by mentioning your name and
the URL of your web site. If the message
board allows it, you can even include
a short promotional blurb about your site
at the end of your posts. However, make
sure that the individual messages that
are posted to that message board are archived
in static HTML pages (i.e. the URLs for
the individual messages should not contain
a "?"). Otherwise, the search
engines will consider these pages to be
dynamic pages and may not spider these
pages and hence, will not be able to find
your link.
Email
based discussion lists which are archived
on the web in static HTML pages can also
be used to boost the link popularity of
your site in a similar manner. In this
case, the signature file that you use
with your email program should contain
the URL for your web site.
5)
Starting a Link Contest
A
good method of improving the link popularity
of your site is to give away prizes to
other webmasters if they link to you.
The prizes that you give out should ideally
be something which other webmasters will
find valuable enough to want to link to
you, but which do not cost you too much.
For instance, if you publish a newsletter,
and have unsold ad inventory, you can
give away some free advertisements in
your newsletter to the winners. If you
sell a software (or an ebook), you can
give away a free copy of your software
or ebook to the winners, since it doesn't
cost you anything to produce an additional
copy of digital goods like software and
ebooks.
Link
contests work best if you run the contest
on a continuous basis and if you declare
new winners frequently. If you run the
contest for a few months, and then stop
it, the webmasters who had linked to you
will all remove their links. However,
if you run it on a continuous basis, and
declare new winners every month or so,
the webmasters will have the incentive
to keep their links to your site.
Also,
make sure that you require all participants
to have a link to your site either in
their home page, or in an internal page
of their site which is linked to their
home page. Also ensure that the page which
contains the link is no more than two
levels deep from their home page (i.e.
it should not take more than two clicks
to go from the home page to the page containing
the link). If they don't do this, the
search engine spiders may not index the
page which contains the link to your site,
and hence, may not find your link.
6)
Writing articles and allowing them to
be re-published
This
is an excellent method of improving the
link popularity of your site. Whenever
I write an article on search engine placement,
I first publish it in my newsletter and
then I publish the article in my site
as a separate web page. You can also submit
it to article directories, there are lots
to choose from by doing a simple search.
Many
webmasters and ezine publishers frequent
these article directories in search of
articles. Submitting my articles to these
directories gives them the opportunity
of re-publishing my articles. While I
have had some success with each of the
above directories, by far the best among
them is the ezinearticles.com directory.
Now,
at the end of each article, I mention
that people are free to re-publish the
article as long as they include my resource
box (i.e. my bio) at the end of the article.
I always include the URL of my site in
the resource box. This means that whenever
someone publishes one of my articles in
his/her web site, I have another site
linking to my site. Also, many ezine publishers
archive their ezines in their web sites.
If they have re-published my article in
a particular issue, I again get a link.
Writing
articles is also an excellent viral marketing
tool. As some webmasters and ezine publishers
publish my articles, other webmasters
and ezine publishers will read my article.
Some of them, in turn, will publish my
article, which will again be read by other
webmasters and ezine publishers, some
of whom will publish it... and so on.
Also,
since only web sites related to mine would
be interested in publishing my articles,
all these links tend to come from related
sites, which, as I mentioned earlier,
are more valuable than links from unrelated
sites.
Writing
articles, of course, has another very
important benefit - if you write good
articles, it makes you known as an expert
in your field. This helps to improve your
credibility, which makes people more comfortable
about buying your products or services.
Some
notes about writing articles:
i)
I have learnt through experience that
some webmasters will publish other people's
articles and will display the complete
resource box but will not link to the
URL mentioned in the resource box. In
order to prevent this, you need to explicitly
state that the article can be published
only if the URL mentioned in the resource
box is linked to your site.
ii)
Your resource box should not be too long
- it should be no more than 6 lines long,
formatted at 65 characters per line. Otherwise,
other webmasters and ezine publishers
will hesitate to publish your article.
7)
Submitting to the directories
This
is by far the most important step as far
as improving the link popularity of your
site is concerned. As I mentioned before,
what is important is not only the number
of links to your site, but also the quality
of the links to your site. No links are
as important as links from some of the
major directories like Yahoo!, the Open
Directory etc. However, Yahoo! currently
requires a payment of $299 per year in
order to list any commercial site. Paying
them $299 per year just to improve your
link popularity is probably not cost effective.
But, the Open Directory is free, and you
should definitely get your site listed
in the Open Directory.
Also,
you should submit your site to as many
of the smaller directories as possible.
You can get a list of such directories
here.
8)
Exchanging links with other webmasters
The
single-most effective way of improving
the link popularity of your site is to
exchange links with other webmasters who
have sites which are related to yours,
but are not direct competitors. This is
called reciprocal linking.
However,
the problem with this method is the sheer
amount of time it takes if you were to
do it manually.
If
you decide to do this manually, you can
easily expect to spend hundreds of hours
on this activity alone.
Here's
what you need to do:
i)
You need to use the search engines to
find sites related to yours that are not
direct competitors by typing in some keywords
that are related to your site.
ii)
You also need to find sites that link
to your competitors.
iii)
You need to visit these sites and see
if they actually exchange links.
iv)
If you decide that you want to exchange
links with a particular site, you need
to find out exactly how it wants you to
link to it from your site.
v)
You then need to manually add a link to
this site in your site.
vi)
Then, you need to find out the email address
of the owner of the website and send the
owner a personalized email requesting
that he/she adds a link to your site in
return.
vii)
In many cases, you will not be able to
locate the email address of the owner
simply because the owner has not published
any email address on the site. In that
case, all the effort that you had put
into evaluating whether or not the site
is suitable for exchanging links will
have been a waste of time.
viii)
If you do manage to locate the email address,
you need to send a personalized and customized
email to the website owner.
ix)
You then need to wait and see whether
this site is willing to exchange links
with you.
x)
If the site is not willing to link to
you, you need to remove the link to the
site from your site. Once again, all the
effort that you had put into evaluating
the site, linking to it and sending an
email to the owner will have been a waste
of time.
You
have to repeat the same process all over
again for the next site that you want
to exchange links with.
Obviously,
there has to be a better way. And there
is!
Luckily
for you, I have developed a ground-breaking
new software called LinkExplore that completely
automates the entire process of exchanging
links with other website owners, thus
saving you hundreds of hours of your time.
I
had originally developed the software
for my own needs but later decided to
make it available to other website owners
as well.
Click
here to learn more about the software.
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to get TOP 10 RANKINGS in Google, Yahoo,
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This
article may be re-published as long as
the following resource box is included
at the end of the article and as long
as you link to the email address and the
URL mentioned in the resource box:
Article
by Sumantra Roy. Sumantra is one of the
most respected and recognized search engine
positioning specialists on the Internet.
