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11. How to quickly find quality link partners
Finding 100 or more quality link partners requires a bit of
work and organization, but the task is not all that difficult.
Just follow these steps:
1 - Create a page for your website and name it Friends or
something to that effect. If you already have a links page,
purge it of all links that lead to a page that has a PR less
than 5 or is a "bad neighborhood".
Place a link to your links page somewhere on your homepage.
I recommend placing the link near the bottom of the page so
that your website's visitors won't see it until after they
have finished reading your home page. After all, why invite
people to leave your site prematurely?
2 - Surf over to Google and do a search on your theme (home
decor, woodworking, etc). The search results page is your
mine for digging up quality reciprocal linking partners. Visit
the first site on the list.
3 - Does the site have a PR of 5 or higher? (Sites near the
top of the search results page almost certainly will.) If
not, visit the next site on the list and repeat this step.
4- After you have found the next site with an acceptable
PR, check to see if their home page has a link to a links
page or a stated link exchange policy. If not, visit the next
site on the list and repeat the process beginning with step
3.
5 - Check to see if the site uses any of the "bad techniques"
listed in the "How Not To Get Banned From Google"
section above. If so, move on to the next site on the list.
6 - After you have found a site that you wish to exchange
links with, place a link to their home page on your links
page. Do this before you attempt to contact the other webmaster.
7 - Email the webmaster (look for a Contact Us link or an
email address on their site). Create a form letter asking
for the link exchange, but personalize the letter for each
webmaster that you are sending the letter to.
If the webmaster's name is listed on the site, address him
by name. If not, just use "Dear Webmaster,". compliment
him on the quality of the site. Mention a distinctive feature
or two about the site so that he can tell that you actually
made a serious visit. Explain that you feel that a link exchange
would benefit both of you and explain why. You might need
to do a little "educating" here as many webmasters
have no idea about the usefulness of link exchanges. Send
your link information along with your email. You should include
the following link info:
Site name: ABC Blue Widgets And Widget Accessories, Inc.
Description: Attractive blue widgets at the lowest prices!
URL: http://www.bluewidgets.com
Contact email address: JohnDoe@bluewidgets.com
Be sure to include a couple of your main keywords in the
link text (the "clickable" part of the link). This
will help increase your PR!
8 - Send the email and wait for a reply from the webmaster.
Of course, while you're waiting you should be contacting other
webmasters in the same way. If he responds with a "no
thanks", or hasn't responded at all after a week or so,
remove his link from your links page and move on.
If he agrees to the exchange, he'll respond with a link to
the page on his site that contains your link. Send him a pleasant
email thanking him for the exchange.
9 - Repeat this process until you have successfully completed
at least 100 link exchanges with quality sites that share
your theme. If you have over 100 links, split them up onto
two or more links pages. You can even split the links up into
categories if you wish.
12. Getting "found" by Google
Note: Google is currently making the transition from a monthly
update process to a more or less "continuous" update
process. This means that some of the information in this part
of the tutorial may soon be out- dated. The SEO procedures
described in the tutorial will still be valid however. Google's
Googlebot spider performs a "deep crawl" around
the first of every month. Googlebot starts with the web pages
that are already in the Google database, usually following
each link on each page on the site.
The external links are then followed which will lead Google
directly to your site. This procedure takes place without
you having to submit your URL to Google at all. You can submit
your URL if you like, but if you follow this guide your site
will be found and indexed before your manual submission is
even processed . Once Google has spidered and indexed your
site, it won't actually show up in the search listings until
the next update (at the end of the month).
Depending on the current month's schedule for spidering and
indexing, it could take up to 6 weeks for your site to be
added to the Google database and actually show up in the search
results. Of course just getting your site into Google is only
half the battle. It does no good to get listed unless your
site shows up near the top of the search results. That is
where working on your site's Page Rank (PR) comes into play.
Follow the steps mentioned previously and you will achieve
a great PR and show up on the first page of the search results.
13. Getting into Yahoo for free
While Yahoo has lost their dominance to Google, they are still
the 2nd most used search vehicle on the web (and a close 2nd
at that). Getting your site to show up in the Yahoo search
results is imperative for a successful business website.
Yahoo used to pull their search results from Google, so getting
a top listing in Google automatically meant also being listed
well in Yahoo. But no more... Yahoo recently rolled out their
own search engine database fed by a combination of a Google-style
"free crawl" and a revamped paid-inclusion program.
The most efficient (and free) method of getting into the
"new" Yahoo is the same as it is with Google - get
some high-quality inbound links and Yahoo's spider will find
you on its own!
14. Free website promotion methods
While most of your traffic will come from search engines and
directories (mostly Google and Yahoo), there are many other
excellent ways to get even more traffic to your website. And
most of them are free!
The single best source of free website promotion is one that
you already have in place by now: Links to your site, reciprocal
and otherwise. While links from high quality websites (as
defined earlier) are essential to attaining a good Page Rank,
any link to your site has the potential to bring in more traffic.
The key is not to link back to a lower quality website. You're
probably asking yourself "How in the world am I supposed
to get webmasters to link to me if I don't offer to link back
to them?". The answer is simple: Just ask them for a
link.
Many webmasters will be more than happy to link to you just
because they like your site or because your site has information
and resources that are of value to their own site's visitors.
Ask away, all she can say is no. But you'll be surprised how
often she'll say yes! In order to raise your level of success
with one-way linking requests, you can sweeten the pot by
offering something other than a link back to the webmaster
in return. You might offer her a free email account or other
free service that your site happens to offer.
If you sell e-books that you have written you can offer one
to the webmaster for free in exchange for a link to your site.
The opportunities are endless. Just use your imagination.
Another excellent source of free traffic is your own website.
Place a "Tell A Friend" script on your site and
let your visitors and customers advertise for you. There are
many sites on the web where you can go to download powerful
scripts for free. A list of links to some of those sites is
provided at the end of this document.
Also don't forget to use a signature file with your email
program. You can send out a free advertisement to everyone
that you send an email to. Just be sure that the email has
another primary purpose besides just advertising your site.
SPAMMing is very much frowned upon and can get a person into
a whole heap of trouble! But if used properly, a signature
file can bring in lots of free traffic. Another source of
free traffic is free classified ad sites. The effectiveness
of classified ads varies from site to site, but hey, it's
free! Just do a Google search on "free classified ads".
Last but not least, you can offer a free newsletter to visitors
who come to your site. And of course your newsletters will
include an advertisement or two! Just be sure to collect the
email addresses with an opt-in newsletter sign-up form.
Collecting email addresses any other way will lead to charges
of Spamming. The first and last lines of each newsletter should
include unsubscribe instructions.
15. Paid website promotion methods
Today, one of the most cost effective methods of purchasing
advertising for your website is the use of Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
search engines and directories.
PPC sites allow you to place an ad with a link on their site.
You select and bid on keywords that will drive visitors to
your site. The higher your bid for each keyword, the higher
on the page your ad will appear when that keyword is searched
on by someone looking for your widgets.
Bids start as low as $.01 per click, but most of the better
PPC sites start the bidding at $.05 to $.10 per click.
For PPC advertising, I strongly recommend Overture and Google
Adwords. Visit their sites for more information. You can find
many other PPC search engines by doing a Google search on
"pay per click".
Another excellent source of paid advertising is Ezines dedicated
to your field or website theme. These ads can be very inexpensive
and they allow you to quickly reach several thousand potential
targeted customers. Again, just do a Google search on "ezine
advertising".
If you plan to advertise in ezines (and you should), we highly
recommend 2 Bucks An Ad. Every time they place ads for us
our traffic and sales increase substantially for the next
few days after the ads are published.
For only $2 per ad, you can advertise to 800,000+ ezine readers
who have already proven to be interested in the topic of your
site.
Last but not least, you can sometimes purchase a link on
a large related website. Why pay for a link? Most large, popular
websites won't do reciprocal links with other smaller sites.
But many will gladly sell you a link for a pretty hefty price.
A site with a Page Rank of 6, 7, or higher will usually have
traffic measured in the million + hits per month range. A
well-placed text ad link purchased from one of these sites
can drive your hit counter crazy.
To request a link purchase, just send an email to the advertising
department and ask! But remember, you should ONLY purchase
an advertising link for the sole purpose of gaining traffic
and customers, not for increasing your Page Rank.
Purchasing a link in order to boost PR skews the quality
of Google's search results. Because of this Google will ban
any site caught doing it.
MORE!
Conclusion As I have said so many times before, search
engine optimization and positioning is a science as well as
an art. What really counts are the results you will get from
your efforts. If you carefully implement all the tips and
techniques that are in this article, your website should rank
well in the search engines and your Web-based business should
be a success.
* = Article by www.rlrouse.com
Rich@RichsWebDesign.com
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