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You have a great website, but it still does not get the traffic you want. Besides spending $$$$$ of dollars with paid search you want to know how to take advantage of the free stuff…natural search.

Having some key information at you disposal will help guide you in your quest for search engine dominance. If you haven’t used the right SEO tools to check your sites’ performance and make the necessary changes you are missing the boat.

Get The Right Link Popularity Tool

One of he most important things you need to use is a tool that measures the Link Popularity of your site. This requirement stems from the simple fact about search engines, they calculate the page ranking for your site based on the number of back-links you have.

What is a back-link? A back-link is a link that points “back” to your site, usually from another site.

If you have a large number of sites that provide a link to your site for a certain keyword, the search engine takes it to mean that your page must have some authoritative content. In such a situation, the page ranking for your site begins to climb.

A Link Popularity tool measures this metric and gives you a clear performance picture of the popularity of your website.

Back-link checking does not end here. You could have sites linking to your home page or they could be linking to a specific page in your site. This is called a deep page link. For obvious reasons, a deep page link is preferable to a mere home page link. Search engines weigh your links accordingly. A back-link checking SEO tool will give you specific information on this so you can create a strategic plan to convert as many of these home page links to deep page links.

Understand The Page-Rank System

As if this was not enough, all search engines employ a page-rank system where they grade websites according to links and other parameters. If your website has a number of back-links from high page-ranked websites, search engines evaluate it as more relevant and give that link a higher rating. So having links from just any site is not always the best case scenario, but having deep page links from high page-ranking sites will give your site more weight with the search engines resulting in more and higher natural rankings.

You may not be able to measure these parameters manually, because you will probably never know which websites provide links to you. However, with the right Link Popularity tool that is built for the job, you will be able to get a good indication of where you stand.

As is evident from the preceding discussion, a good Link Popularity tool will be able to tell you how you stand and how to make an early correction before market forces tell you to. Do remember however, that all Link Popularity tools are only tools. Their application is your responsibility. Your journey begins with producing a great product and bringing it to the market. If you have a great product, smart use of a Link Popularity tool can increase your chances of success.

Tom Dwyer is a former senior executive at one of the largest interactive marketing agencies and now spends his time consulting with businesses and organizations on all aspects of business life. Visit Tom at Talkin’ With TommyD

The big debate raging on the Internet these days focuses on Google’s recent campaign to ensure that paid links aren’t part of the determination of popularity of a website. Their take is that if you buy links, you’re trying to skew the results of any search in order to increase your presence in the rankings. But wait, isn’t that what any successful company wants to do? Increase their presence and popularity?

Taking a closer look at what Google’s official stance is, you’ll find that Google doesn’t condemn outright companies who sell or buy links. In fact, they state on their website that, “Buying and selling links is a normal part of the economy of the web when done for advertising purposes, and not for manipulation of search results.” And here is where Google’s new campaign runs into trouble. How does one decide what links are for “advertising purposes” vs. “manipulation of search results?”

It is inherent that any article, review or informational posting a company has on their website will have words and phrases that will register in search results. The information wouldn’t be relevant to the reader if it weren’t also relevant in searches, and vice-versa. The same can be said for articles and reviews that are on other sites but link back to a particular company’s own website. The dilemma for Google is that there is really no way of knowing when and if a link was paid for.

The fact is that the Google algorithm can’t distinguish between a paid link and an equity link. Consultants often provide links to companies they are doing or have done work for. Authors link to bookstores carrying their latest work, and software firms link to client companies. These aren’t paid links, but they sure do increase the rankings for sites that, quite frankly, improve the bottom line for them personally.

The next blog you visit may have a few relevant articles on great ways to raise an all-natural garden. If the blog is associated with a site that sells all-natural fertilizers and pesticides, it’s only natural that these articles will provide needed and valued information. If these sites link to other sites that have books about natural gardening, how can Google determine whether these are paid links or natural?

The simple answer is, it isn’t possible. These links could be because the writer of the articles actually uses and endorses the products mentioned in the links or the book publisher and the gardening supplies house have a reciprocal agreement. Other reasons could be because the book publisher paid for a link, the owner of the publishing house received a free load of fertilizer to try out (in hopes of being mentioned in a future book); he liked it; he thanked them with a link, or even the gardening supplies company is owned by a man whose sister is a sales associate for the book publisher.

But the results are the same. The links are relevant, regardless of whether they were paid for in cash, as a favor, in trade or in sweat equity. It’s this vary blurring of the lines that makes it so practical and helpful to buy links. The more relevant information you provide to consumers, the more valuable you become. If a link is relevant, helpful and trustworthy, it should and will increase the ranking of the site it’s on.

Google has asked that Internet users report sites that have paid links. It’s a laughable suggestion. How does anyone else on the Internet know whether you have paid for a link or not? They can’t. And this is why, although some people may temporarily “go underground” with purchased links, the practice isn’t going to stop. It’s a good thing, because these links increase competition and encourage growth and change, two very important aspects of a dynamic marketplace. Whether you buy a link or receive it unsolicited, it’s going to be useful and relevant. If it weren’t, the link wouldn’t show up in Google’s algorithm anyway.

Finally, Google suggests that those who buy links are “buying page rank.” Page rank isn’t for sale, particularly since it is owned by Google. The algorithm removes or penalizes non-relevant information in search results. If the information is relevant, it will improve rankings. To that end, it doesn’t matter at all whether that link was paid for in cash or trade.

Vertical Measures, one of the industry’s link building experts, offers quality link building services.

Are you serious about driving traffic to your website? If you are then you should develop a linking strategy. People follow the recommendations of trusted websites. When a trusted website links to yours you suddenly get immediate attention. There are three major link strategies: 1) Purchasing text links 2) Employing a link finding service 3) Reciprocal linking.

This article focuses on the latter-reciprocal linking. Reciprocal linking means that your website links to another and their website links back to yours. Its a great way to increase your ranking in search engines. Search engines use link popularity to rank sites. Therefore exchanging reciprocal links with other websites will encourage visitors to not only visit your website but bookmark it as well.

Now, this is not as simple as throwing your links all over the World Wide Web. If that were the case nearly all websites would be popular. In order to have success with reciprocal linking you should bare in mind these factors.

The quality of links should out weigh the quantity. The inbound links should come from sites that are relevant to your site content Partners should link to you from pages listing as few links as possible.

The first thing is to get people to want to link to your website. This begins with having good web content. Analyze the value of your content in relation to your competitors.

Next, you need to research websites that are worth linking to and that will drive relevant traffic to your website. Take your time to identify the directories, news sites, portals, blogs and ezines that are specific to your field. There are many software tools that you can purchase to help make this task more efficient. They will locate relevant sites, collect email addresses and even prepare letters requesting that the website link back to yours.

Arelis Reciprocal Link Solution, Links Manager and Linkpro are but a few examples. Even if you decide to use software, its important to visit the websites that these tools generate. However, good quality content is still the best way to build long term link popularity.

You can determine the websites traffic by visiting www.alexa.com you will also learn the length of time their site has been online. Going to link sites that will tell you how many sites link to them for further proof that they get a lot of traffic. One should keep in mind the following components when adopting a reciprocal linking strategy.

You will need to know the name and email address of the person who runs the site, as well you should keep a record of the date you contacted the owner of the website and the date that he or she responds.

You will also need to make note of the resulting deal. Dont be surprised if some people say no, while others will not reply at all. Some may want money for links.

If the web owner agrees to swap links, verify that the links are in place and check the website periodically for the link. Some people swap links and then pull yours. When applied correctly, reciprocal linking is an excellent strategy for getting traffic and improving your search engine ranking.

Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant with career sales over $25,000,000. His “Top Ranked” Work at Home Directory gives you all the information you need to start and prosper with your own Internet Home Based Business.

Do you participate in link exchange? You may be confused about how having links on your website benefits you. In fact you could be linking your way into obscurity. Did you ever consider that each link to another website is an invitation to leave your site? Is that really what you want - to invite people to leave?

Your focus should be on getting more links pointing to your website. This increases your traffic and search engine rankings. However, the more outbound links you have on your webpage, the more it weakens your Google page rank as well you are asking your visitors
to click on those outbound links and visit someone elses website.

Search engines are really only interested in links to your site which are from a site that has similar content as your own. Apparently, there is evidence to suggest that having links from sites that are not relevant to the content of your own, can even damage your position with the search engines.

Link exchange can be a good thing but there are few things to keep in mind:

1.As said before having too many outbound links on your site invites your visitors to leave and may damage your search engine ranking.

2.Exchanging links with sites with poor quality content or a poor page rank can hurt your rankings.

3.Having a link directory on your site doesnt encourage Google to crawl your site more. And just because Google is crawling your site more, doesnt necessarily mean that you are going to improve your ranking.

4.If you must have outbound links make them worth your while ie. affiliate links or other promotions.

Yes, link exchanging can be helpful but there are other ways that you can get lots of inbound links for your site, without having to provide reciprocal links. And these methods tend to be more effective.

1. Write short articles, 300 to 500 words, on subjects closely related to your site, and then distribute them over the internet through various article directories. People who are looking for content for their websites, or newsletters, can then look through the article directories to find fresh content. If they choose to publish your article, they then have to include a link back to your website from their site. Just a few articles can get you 50 inbound links.

2. Submit a press release - this won’t always get you a large number of inbound links, but it can get you top ten listing.

3. Make sure your site is listed in some of the directories across the internet.

4. Start an affiliate program.

5. Create a viral marketing campaign. You could try a free short ebook that contains some useful information, and a link back to your site, which people are allowed to distribute freely.

The last thing you want to do is to link your way out of business. Be wise when you participate in link exchange and apply some other methods to gain quality traffic to your website.

Jeff Casmer is an internet marketing consultant with career sales over $25,000,000. His “Top Ranked” Work at Home Directory gives you all the information you need to start and prosper with your own Internet Home Based Business.

Linking your internet home business’ website to other similar sites is important because it helps in getting search engines find and index your website. Linking to different unique site will advance your web site page ranks and link popularity. Link popularity is a key tool used by search engine algorithms to rank and list website URLs.

What is the benefit of being indexed by search engines? If you can be found on the search engines under your keyword searches, and thus will get free traffic send to your site by the search engines. For your internet home business succeed, you will need a lot of traffic.

For you to be indexed by the search engines, and listed high on the list of search engine results displayed to surfers searching for specific keywords, there are certain rules you should follow. Listed below are the key common search engines blunders which you must avoid, and some key steps you must take to ensure success with your internet home business.

If you want your website to be popular on the Internet then it simple cannot be isolated. You must find ways to make other websites link back to your website. Lets look at how you can create inbound links to your website. There are many reasons why inbound links matter. First of all, they build your page rank or popularity. Page rank is basically a scale in which your site is ranked which is based on the number of links coming into your website. The more links, the higher the page rank. Higher page rank means your website is that much more popular. Secondly it helps a lot in search engine rankings. The number of websites linking to you will speak of your worth to Internet users. If you see a lot of links coming in that means your website is considered to be worthy on the Internet. If you’re truly doing well, you can even land at the top spot of search results, which spells massive traffic and higher conversion rate for your online business.

The question now is this: where and how do you get free inbound links? Here are some easy methods to consider:

1. Participate in forums. You can start looking for message boards and chat rooms that are related to your chosen niche. When you have a good list, you can start signing up. You will notice that these sites actually permit you to build your own profile as well as add your signature, which will appear in all of your posts. You can use these spaces to add the URL of your website or specific pages. As long as your chosen message boards are also performing well in Google, you can expect that you can benefit from their increased page rank. What’s more, because you have exposed your links to different webmasters too, you are increasing your chances of being linked by other websites. The goal is to find forums that are popular in the same market that’s relevant to your website, join each forum and then make some good, worthy posts at each of them. Do not spam the forums with junk. Make sure that you contribute ethically and be a good member. Each of your posts will include your signature with a link back to your website. Each of those links will count towards your in bound link and thus increase your page rank as well.

2. Create your own blog. There are more and more people who are getting interested in reading blogs. This is because bloggers are very generous with their information. Besides, they get to know some personal insights, which can help them too in their business or in their personal affairs. Blogs, at the SEO standpoint, get indexed easily by Google. That alone is already good news for you. Moreover, if you leave a link to your blog in other people’s blogs, you’re actually providing yourself an inbound link. You can also obtain links going into your website and allowing other blogs to link to you and vice versa. A list of linked websites is known as the Blog Roll.

3. Submit articles to article directories. Content is certainly king in the World Wide Web. You can add links to the body of your article, which can also generate excellent inbound links into your website. And if this isn’t enough, you can add some more in the resource box. Take a look at the end of this article and you’ll see what I mean. I’ve included a link to my own website in my resource box which will hopefully give me a link back to my site.

Whatever technique you choose, you have to remember one thing: stick to policies. You may be getting your website an inbound link, but if you don’t follow rules, it will completely destroy your reputation.

Khemal Dole owns and operates http://www.PaychecksDirect.com which offers a FREE Work At Home Beginner’s Course that teachers beginners how to earn at least $500 a month from home. Visit http://www.PaychecksDirect.com and see for yourself why his course is one of the BEST for Work At Home Beginners.