Link Exchanging Basics

Utilize Foresight, Not Hindsight, When Link Exchanging:

Regardless of the premise behind a link exchange, webmasters are essentially sharing traffic. This is done either directly with physical clicks or indirectly through search engine recognition. While search engine recognition seems to be the major motive of most exchanges, using foresight should prominent.

There are a variety of promotional based information sources the illustrate using the Google toolbar to demonstrate how popular the Website is on the internet. While this is a good idea to get an idea of popularity, it is using hindsight. This rates past efforts the developers have implemented. However, low PR does not mean that Website is unworthy.

The Website may quickly gain recognition. This would make the link exchange valuable or equal in the future. How do use foresight? Mjmls utilizes these standards when considering an addition to the Directory:

1. What is the owner’s Email or IP address? Get the owner or developers Email address and IP address or both. Once this information is obtained, compare it to known spam lists. Why? Mjmls considers Website that use Spam, “unsolicited advertising,” as a poor candidate to trade links and not a good place to send people and search engines. There are no excuses for spam. It wastes valuable time of consumers, costs online businesses thousands of dollars, slows down the performance of servers, and creates a poor experience for everyone.

The website is doomed to eventually be closed down, appear in Spam Blacklists, and may decrease the value of linking websites both by search engines and physical users. Basically, this is not the type of person that should be endorsed by an honest developer.

2. Analyze the content of the Website. Is there something unique? A unique website that offers resources to users will be bound to succeed. The website will gain recognition over time because of the resources that are offered. However, keep in mind that Websites change frequently. If a link was made to a Website, and the site changed without notice, delete the link and add the user to a personal ban list. A good marketing campaign will keep accurate records of where the site is being promoted.

In contrast, if it contains plagiarized pages with sponsor ads making up a major portion of the content, or prominently displayed over and above the page copy, the site may be a poor candidate to include in a link exchange. Why? The designer’s motives are clear. They are not attempting to offer anything to users. They simply are trying to create a, “cash cow”. The content will change, the url will probably become blacklisted and eventually the pages that linked to this website will contain a dead link.

If a change is made to the content of the Website, rendering the site irrelevant to previous promotions, or the URL has changed, the person behind the marketing should immediately notify everyone that needs to update the links or advertisements on their Website. If this is not done, the person marketing the Website simply does not care about you or your Website. Add his or her IP Address, Email Address, and known URLs to your personal Ban List. Unless a formal apology is received in the future, this person should be avoided. A computer makes managing a marketing campaign extremely easy, especially if the computer has a database application such as Microsoft Access. Therefore, the only reason not to notify linking sites is that the necessary time was not taken when developing the marketing campaign, or they are ignorant to you and your visitors.

Check all links at least every quarter (3 months).

3. Does the company or entrepreneur have an active promotional campaign?

Where are links to the Website found? Scout the internet for the Website. Links are sure to appear on irrelevant Webpages with a poor description and anchor text, as anyone can add a link to their site with a custom name and description, but there should be quality links too. How and where the website is advertised will reveal the type of promotional efforts being implemented. Is the Website featured in useful directories with strict listing policies or directories that charge a fee? This would indicate that the developer is active in seeking quality leads rather than herds of traffic that are not interested in his or her Website.

Analyze the description and anchor text (usually a title) that is being suggested. This will indicate how much they truly care about their Website and the traffic that visits. If the description and title are packed with keywords, they are attempting to spam the search engines. Once again, it is suggested to avoid linking with these types of people.

An active and quality linking campaign would require thought. A uniform title and description should be used. This title and description should be concise and to the point. It should not include phrasing such as: the best place on the web, or the number one place in the world, etc… The title and description should contain some keywords, after all, these are words that describe the Website.

Tip: When a request is presented, read the title and description suggested and attempt to envision the site before opening the page in a browser. Then visit the page while keeping the title and description in mind. In the majority of cases, opening the page will not even be necessary. Mjmls declines three out of four free submissions from reading the title and description while considering the category the Website was suggested. However, do not get fooled by a well written title and description. Open the page and surf around. In some cases, the Website is not remotely close to the impression that is provided from the title and description. Regardless of how many visitors will actually see the link, remember they will not be happy clicking on deceptive links with a poor description.

How Well is the Website Maintained

Before referring people and search engines to another website, take a close look at how well the site is monitored. Scan for broken links. A developer only needs to devote a couple hours out of his or her week to look for and remove broken links. Here is a free and resourceful utility that allows anyone to surf any Website while revealing dead or questionable links (double check questionable links): http://www.poisontooth.com/linkcheck/.

If you are finding an abundance of broken and deceptive links, this indicates that there is a lack of maintenance to the Website. The developer has lost interest or simply does not care if his or her visitors are clicking on broken links. Avoid linking to this Website all together.

Summing Up

As most will discover, an active and quality linking campaign is not easy. Allocate a predetermined amount of time to link development. It may take several months to several years to reap the benefits of a linking campaign. Keep in mind, the benefits of a good linking campaign generally surpasses all other promotional efforts. In addition, it is probably the most affordable alternative that offers long-term rewards. By planning, monitoring, and being proactive in a linking campaign, your Website will gain significant recognition. If your suggestions are being declined, don’t get discouraged. Try and figure out why it is being declined so often. Look for typo’s in the text. Read the title and description. Ensure that keywords are not being overly used. Most importantly, read the terms of linking if applicable.

How to Create a Links Page and Build Page Rank

Linking out is good

Many websites I come across don't have a single link to another website. Ask the webmaster why not, and the answer you get is simple enough: "If I link to other websites people might leave my site." At this point I break the news that site visitors will leave your site. And there's nothing you can do about this.

Site visitors won't leave your site because you provide links to external sites. They'll leave for one of two reasons:

They've found what they were looking for and no longer have a reason to stay on your website
They can't find the information they're looking for and leave to seek it elsewhere
"OK, so site visitors are going to leave my site. But why should I hunt around for websites to link to?" I can think of four reasons why linking out is good for you and will ultimately increase traffic to your website:

Proof there's a real organisation behind the website

One of the best ways to prove your organisation really exists is to link to other websites that reference you. Any website willing to mention your organisation is in effect providing a reference for you. Just 52.8% of web users believe online information to have credibility (source: http://ccp.ucla.edu/pdf/UCLA-Internet-Report-Year-Three.pdf) and four in five users say that being able to trust the information on a site is very important to them in deciding to visit a website (source: http://www.consumerwebwatch.org/news/1_TOC.htm).

Links about your organisation can include:

Press articles
Affiliation listings
Professional association membership details
Awards your organisation has won
Articles published by a member of your organisation
Directory listings (such as Yahoo! or the Open directory)
Anyone can put up a website making whatever kind of claims they want to.

Have a look at the fantastic Christian women's wrestling website at http://www.jesus21.com/poppydixon/sports/cww.html. It's got quite a lot of information about them and lots of photos. And it's 100% fake.

Backs up your arguments

Ensure that all statements about your organisation are backed up by third party websites. For example, if you sell toys it's very easy to make a statement such as, "We're the number one online toy seller in the country!" Anyone can make this statement, so prove that it is true by linking to an external website showing a list of the top online toy sellers last year.

Most of the time your site visitors probably won't follow these links, but that doesn't matter - the important thing is that you've shown evidence to back up the claims you're making.

Benefit to your site visitors

The Internet is designed for users to flow through it from one website to the next - don't make your website the last one in the flow. If you know of websites that you find really useful, and you think your site visitors might too, be sure to link to them. By offering a range of useful links you may even come across as an industry expert and someone who really knows their stuff.

When providing links make sure you do so at appropriate times. Don't relegate external links to a links page - site visitors aren't so likely to visit this page as a links page doesn't immediately address their needs. Instead, provide links as and when they're appropriate to the content of each page.

For example, if you run an accountancy firm you may wish to link to a website that has an up-to-date reference guide about new tax laws in the field of accounting. You don't have the time to provide that kind of regularly updated information on your website but your site visitors would find it really useful. Help out your site visitors and they'll hold your organisation in a positive light.

Search engine benefits

One of the ways search engines try to work out what your website is about is by analysing its inbound and outbound links. The more confidence a search engine has of what your website's about, all other things being equal, the higher search engine ranking you'll achieve. By providing outbound links to related sites you actually help the search engines analyse your site and therefore help your search ranking.

Jon Ricerca did a mini-analysis to see if outbound links affect search engine rankings and his results were pretty conclusive: web pages with more outbound links generally achieved higher search rankings (see http://www.webcredible.co.uk/user-friendly-resources/search-engine-optimisation/number-links.shtml). Be warned though, an inbound link is worth far more than an outbound link so do not link to your competitor's websites!

Conclusion

Don't be afraid to link out. Your site visitors will appreciate you introducing them to useful websites, you can increase your credibility and you can achieve a higher search engine ranking. So check your favourites folder and if you think your site visitors would benefit from any of the websites there be sure to include them in an appropriate place on your site.

Determining the Value of Links from Link Renting

Link renting is a means to ‘rent’ the popularity and traffic flow of another site – you pay a monthly fee in return for a text link pointing to your site. In doing so, you can directly and indirectly drive more targeted traffic toward your website.

Many industries such as travel, pharmacy, pornography, and gaming have search results which are hyper competitive and require heavy advertising or aggressive SEO techniques. Some niche websites may see an even greater ROI on smart link rentals since many of their competitors may not include link renting in their online marketing budgets.

Some rented links provide great value in direct targeted traffic, whereas some other links provide greater value from the effect they have on search relevancy.

Most links are rented on a monthly basis with an option to renew at the end of the month. Some link prices can be as low as a few dollars a month whereas some can cost thousands per month.

There is no singular one-size-fits-all way to directly assume the value of a link. Most effective marketing has risks associated with it, but you can minimize the risks and maximize your return by breaking the value of the link down into its elements:

a)  Direct traffic from link renting

b)  Viral effect of advertising

c)  Effects of link rentals on search relevancy.

a)  Direct Traffic from Link Renting:

Link renting can drive significant direct traffic. The first things you need to know are:

1..what is the quality level of the traffic?

2..how related is this audience to my product?

3..how much traffic does the site receive?

What is the Quality Level of the Traffic:

Where does the bulk of their traffic come from? Someone recently asked about ePilot, the pay per click search engine, at Search Engine Watch forums. Andrew Goodman replied "The first question I would ask myself would be: 'where does ePilot's traffic come from?' Answer isn't clear? Then it would be no surprise that the so-called traffic doesn't convert to anything."

This same concept holds true with any site. If you do not see any quality inbound links that could indicate a problem: or they could get most of their traffic from pay-per-click ads. Whatever the case, if you are going to spend money renting links for traffic, make sure you know where their traffic comes from.

How Related is the Audience:

It will be somewhat of a guesstimate as to how exactly how related the traffic will be, but generally it is fairly obvious when something is on theme or off theme. Some things you may want to consider when determining traffic quality:

 

1..What is the mood / mind set of their traffic? Related traffic may not be traffic that converts. At the 2004 Webmaster World Las Vegas Conference a speaker mentioned that a website about prom hairstyles may not be a good place to advertise prom dresses since girls do not usually look at prom hairdos until after they have already purchased their prom dresses.

2..What product should I advertise? Sometimes it makes sense to send traffic to your home page while other times it is more logical to advertise a specific product because it is hot or more related to that particular audience.

How Much Traffic Does the Site Receive:

Most honest webmasters who sell ad space understand that the traffic they receive is a large part of their ad value and should have no problems giving you that information.

Some systems such as Alexa also track traffic, but their statistics can be inaccurate due to their limited distribution.. The best way to use such systems is not for traffic estimates but for comparisons between sites. Note that Alexa has a heavy bias toward webmaster resource type sites. Additionally other companies such as Hitwise may provide more accurate traffic statistics.

From the base traffic level there is a bunch more research you can do to determine how much traffic the site may bring:

 

1..Who currently advertises on the site? You may want to ask them about their advertising experience. Some ad networks such as AdBright show past advertisers average cost per click and ad renewal rates.

2..How many ads are on the page? Each additional ad will split up some of the traffic.

 

3..Where does your ad sit? Ads that are tucked away in the footer or in common ad space may get less exposure and drive less traffic. Ads near the content may gain additional exposure and drive more traffic.

4..What ad formats can be used? Certain ad creatives may provide greater value than other ads.

5..What is the ad turnover rate? Advertisers tend to stay with a site that delivers traffic. A high turnover rate may indicate other problems.

7..Have advertisers made any suggestions? Ask if any of their past advertisers made any suggestions or stated that they found any particular setup as being especially helpful.

8..Is the traffic seasonal? Some sites have large shifts in traffic volume due to seasonal factors.

b)   Viral Effect of Advertising:

Some ads go through click tracking systems which may prevent them from being indexed by search engines. This means that the only value of those particular links would come from direct traffic. Sometimes ads lead to additional exposure though.

c)   Effect of Link Rentals on Search Relevancy:

Many links have a greater indirect value than direct value.

When someone links to your site it is seen by search engines as a vote of quality. The anchor text and other page elements such as the page title and headers may also help search engines further classify the link. On image links the image alt text plays the roll of the anchor text.

On the commercial web many links are bought and sold, and thus for search engines to remain relevant they must find ways to regulate link purchasing.

Some of the things you may want to look for when buying links to help maximize your ROI and minimize your risks:

 

1..Are the links direct links? Links that go through an ad server usually do not help build your link popularity.

2..Is the page on theme? On topic links from industry hubs are given significantly more weighting in clustering or community based algorithms such as Teoma's topic distillation and Google's Hilltop. If the site allows off topic links then it has a greater chance of having its link popularity blocked or devalued.

3..How many links are on the page? If a page sells an unlimited number of ads then the outbound link popularity is split up many ways, and that also could look a bit unnatural to search engines. If there are hundreds of internal links on a page then each additional link will be getting an exceptionally small share of link popularity.

4..What anchor text can I use? If you can use descriptive anchor text then the value of the link is greater since the link text helps search engines understand what your site is about.

5..What is the cost difference between site wide and individual page links? Generally site wide links may drive significantly more direct traffic, but likely they do not provide much additional weight beyond a single link from the best page on the site.

6..What is the PageRank of the page? Generally many people place too much value on PageRank, but a higher PageRank does equate to greater connectivity and slightly additional value.

7..Who links to the page and to the site? If the page or site is well connected within your topical community then search engines will likely consider links from it as being far more important than links from pages which are not as well connected.

Summary:

To best determine the value of a link you need to consider both its direct and indirect effects. Generally it is best to buy on topic links since they provide both direct and indirect value.

You Need More Links:Here's How to Get Them

After all, did you know that more website traffic is generated from incoming links than any other source? And I'm sure you realize that search engine ranking is boosted significantly when you have lots of sites linking to yours.

But getting other sites to link to your site is difficult and time-consuming, right?

Well, the truth is, it does not have to be difficult if you know a few tricks of the trade. Today's gazette will show you a couple proven secrets to boosting your incoming links sharply.

Let's start by checking out your site for incoming links. You can do that right now at this Market Leap's Free Link Popularity Checker. It measures your website's visibility online by counting up all the links to your site.

The site also lets you enter up to three other URLs so you can compare yours to them. The results show your URL among lots of popular sites on the web. Not only is this free tool fun to try, it can reveal important information about your web presence.

I just ran a report on this bizweb2000.com site and it was interesting to discover more than 30,000 incoming links, just shy of coke.com. That's a lot of links!

You may be wondering how a one-person business like mine, in a super-competitive niche has generated so many links. Your first guess may be that I bought them. But you would be way off base. While I know lots of webmasters who do buy links, I'm not one of them. In fact, I have never bought a link to my site other than an occasional (and I mean very occasional) banner ad.

So if a cheapskate like me can get that many links, anybody can! You just have to have a plan. And I'd like to help you with that right now.

Get a powerful link-building plan in place...

First of all, getting other sites to link to yours takes a bit of originality. You can't just surf the web and email webmasters with "wanna swap links?" messages. (Well, you can do that, but you'll spend a good part of your life doing it before you get many quality links.)

But there are ways to get lots of links. I invite you (and encourage you!) to emulate the following two strategies at your site...

1. "Pre-license" your content.

If you ever create your own tips, articles or content for the web or email newsletters, you really should be pre-licensing it to others. Pre-licensing content is as simple as including a short footer after your work. It looks something like this:

* You have permission to reprint what you just read. Use it in your ezine, at your website or in your newsletter. The only requirement is including the following footer with it...

Article by YOUR NAME, visit www.YourWebsiteUrl.com for more original content like this. Reprinting this article is permitted with this footer included.

This passive link building strategy really works, but it does take some time. But remember, if you do it like the above, the process is viral. Even if one site uses your content, you could obtain an endless number of links without the linking sites even coming to your site!

There are lots of websites in need of decent content. Supply it and you can benefit greatly - if you do it right!

Of course, if you want to build your incoming links faster, you need a more pro-active approach.

2. Use the newest link-building tools available.

OK, first of all, you must be very careful here. While lots of new link-building tools come along every few months or so, only a few actually work. In fact, if you use the wrong tool, it can actually have a negative affect on your website. That's because some link-building tools are not search engine friendly and can cause your site to be penalized.

That said, there are some ingenious tools out there that can speed up your link building substantially, without doing anything that could get you penalized in the search engines. One such tool I stumbled on recently is called LinkExplore™.

This clever little tool from a well-known and respected search engine specialist has been quietly pushing websites to top ranking in Google, Yahoo and other major search engines.

Again, it's the old concept of originality at work. The software developer, Sumantra Roy built a database of thousands of popular sites across many niches. Using the intuitive LinkExplore™ interface, webmasters are able to simply click a few buttons and automate the entire process of finding their best link partners, contacting them, and linking up.

While I rarely recommend tools that automate the process of link building, I have to give this new tool two thumbs up -- especially after reading some of the testimonials at the site. Not only are webmasters with terrific results raving about the software, but SEO experts are writing things like this as well...

"I'm very skeptical when it comes to products that automate any portion of Search Engine Optimization. I figure that anything that can be created automatically can be spotted automatically, and thus be eventually accounted for by the search engines and removed. The same goes for automated linking related software - I've never found one that I'd use nor recommend to my clients; either they leave clues on the website, or look like spam to a potential linking partner.

LinkExplore is my one great exception to this rule. LinkExplore allows me to take a very time consuming part of SEO and make it much more tolerable. I can make the elements that it automates look as personal as I care to, or use the templates for complete automation. I'm recommending it to all my clients and friends."

The fact is, every site needs a link building strategy. The sooner you start yours, the more it will help your profits, especially in the long run.

No matter which route you choose, the slow steady content licensing route, or the more pro-active approach above, (or ideally both!) the important thing is that you have some kind of "get links" strategy. It is one of the real secrets behind growing your business online.

Link Popularity Masters Course