The Spoon Boon Blog

How to Exchange links with other Sites

As a result of search engine changes, linking with other sites is becoming an increasingly iportant way to generate traffic to your website. Links done properly will repay the effort and not be subject to the whims of the search engines. No more need to be concerned unduly about algorithmn changes and the “Google dance”.

Why have a Links Page ?

A links page should give your visitors a choice of quality information and resources, not just a web page to improve your search engine rankings. Quality information on a links page is the best long-term strategy to improve search engine ranking.

Search engines are becoming very sophisticated and realise that many sites are putting up links merely to improve their rankings. Always exchange links with web sites that are connected with your site’s theme.

How Do you Find Link Exchange Partners?

One way is to go to the search engines and look for sites that are compatible with your own. Send the webmaster an email requesting requesting a link or phone him or her personally.

An easier way is to register with the SiteSell free link exchange program which will give you quality links and save you a lot of time. To register free for the SiteSell link exchange program go to :

http://www.merchant-account-service.com/link_exchange.html

How can I tell the web site I want to exchange with has any traffic?

Check the traffic ranking with Alexa (www.alexa.com). This will give you a good idea of its popularity. Another way is to check its page rank with Google. If a web site has a page rank of 4, it is more popular than one with a page rank of 20. Try to exchange links with sites that have more traffic but you must be realistic also.

How do I show my links on my web Site?

You can put your links anywhere on your web site, provided you do not have a large page with links to all kinds of sites. Remember, keep your links relevant to the content of your site.

If you have only a few links, the best way is to have a list with the title of the web site and a short description of its content. Large numbers of links are not recommended as it looks a bit tacky.

Exchange links can be worth the time and effort if done properly. The golden rule is only exchange links with other web sites that have content related to yours.

(c) John Lynch

( For a Free 6-part mini course on Internet Marketing including free interviews with top marketers such as Jay Abraham, Joe Vitale etc., free autoresponder and free Internet Marketing ebooks by top gurus. http://www.merchant-account-service.com/internet_marketing_explai ned.html)

Over the past few articles I’ve brought you different tactics you can use to help build quality links to your site.

And while I am going to continue to bring you even more of these tactics I thought it would be good to step back and take a big picture look at why link building is important.

Further, I wanted to look at other things you should be considering when you are doing your link building: Namely managing your online reputation.

As the web evolves, reputation management becomes even more critical to your online business. This is because many people will form their opinion of your or your business based on the sites found around you.

An upset former customer can do a whole lot more damage to your reputation online that you may suspect. If they are a popular blogger, for example, and are able to call on their network of sites to help promote their negative view of you, it can have a detrimental impact on your search rankings.

This is because they can use a tactic called link bombing to rank higher than you for your name or the name of your company. What do you mean links can be bad? Just like how you need to build links to improve your link popularity and ultimately search engine rankings, links from other sites can work against you. Let me give you a practical example:

If you do a search on Google for “miserable failure” or “failure” you will see that President George Bush’s White House bio is ranked number one. This is an example of many thousands of sites linking to the site’s bio page, with the anchor text “miserable failure” and “failure” in them. Google then counts these links as votes for the site for that phrase. Since the site receives the most votes it ranks the highest.

But this is just one example of using links to negatively influence search rankings. There is another where personal sites and blogs have used similar linking strategies to outrank corporate websites for negative terms.

I once talked to an attorney who was ranked #2 for his own name behind a blog site which went on about how terrible an attorney he was and how you shouldn’t hire him.

The blog site took advantage of the system by requesting links on the attorneys name from other bloggers, thus moving it ahead of the attorney’s own site.

It is this type of tactic which can be used against you because in this case, short of legal action, the attorney would have to build even more links to his site for his name than the negative blog.

In the mean time, however, the blogger continues receiving links as other sites which link to him now request the same links. It becomes a snowball effect. One link leads to three, which leads to ten, then a hundred, then 500 then 1,000 and so on.

That is the real power of blogging - the ability to quickly build links back to your site on virtually any phrase you chose to target.

And since bloggers have that much pull, they can (and in many cases do) use that ability against you.

But it doesn’t have to be just bloggers that do that. Any site that has the pull can post a derogatory page about you and flood the web with backlinks, through submissions to thousands of directories and other sites which don’t check for quality and will accept automated submissions.

And the kicker of this is, by the time you realize it has happened to you, it’s almost too late.

That’s because those links were submitted months ago and have passed Google’s aging policy. The only way you can combat this is to build a similar number of positive links and wait the same time until Google approves the links and adds them to your link inventory.

As you can imagine that can take some time so in the meantime your site suffers because of these negative tactics which were begun months ago.

So how you do combat negative links?

There is no real way to combat them. Once they are there they pretty much exist forever. The only real strategy is to ensure that you continue to build high quality relevant links to your site. Thus, you are essentially taking preventative action against those who may not have your best interests at heart.

That means using the tactics I’ve described in some of the recent articles, and continuing to monitor your link popularity.

It also doesn’t hurt to subscribe to services like Google Alerts. I use this to monitor a variety of keywords both in the news and in the organic rankings.

You could create an alert for your name and receive emails whenever there is a mention of your name - either through the news, or when a site begins to move in the organic rankings.

Then you can monitor a few sites to ensure that nothing magically appears ahead of you that is negative in nature.

And if you do find a negative site that appears on Google’s radar, at least you can take a somewhat proactive stance and begin building positive links at an increased rate, to keep them down in the rankings, and solidifying your position.

Summary

I don’t want to scare you with this. It’s not something that is rampant on the web. In fact, the average person has no idea how to “trash” you online, other than perhaps posting a negative comment on your website (if you allow commenting).

All I wanted to do with this article was to let you know that such individuals do exist. And they do have the power to supplant your positive online image with a negative review of you even if it is untrue.

But if you follow the rules of good link building you can help prevent such attacks from happening to you.

Link Popularity as you know plays a BIG part in your websites ranking within the Search Engines.

So, the basic breakdown is, the more links pointing to your website, the higher up the search engines will rank your website.

More importantly though is getting those High PR websites linking back to yours.

The question at hand is… “How can I get those High PR links without having to buy High PR links and/or spend countless hours surfing the web for link partners with the possible potential of being denied?”

And as webmasters, we can not afford to waste time, especially if your starting out on a part time basis.

We must utilize every minute we can to getting the most out of our efforts.

So with that being said, I’m going to reveal to you the ‘Back Door’ strategy I use for getting those High PR links to your website Absolutely FREE and have them begging you to come back.

And the cool thing is this can be done following these 3 steps I’m about to mention so pay attention because if you do just this, you will not only get hundreds of backlinks to your website, you’ll also get hundreds, if not thousands of Targeted visitors to your website at the same time…

…all for FREE!

Are you ready?

Good, because I am.

Step #1. First you must write an Article.

The first step is to write an related article about your Product or Service that draws the reader in and gets them to click through to your website once they finish reading it to find out more about you and your Product or Service.

Now, your probably wondering why you have to write an article.

Well, it’s real simple actually because what do you get to put at the end of your article?

Your ‘Resource Box’ with your website information and most important of all… your URL pointing back to your website.

So when someone chooses to publish your article in their newsletter or on their website, blog or article directory, they MUST add your ‘Resource Box’ with your website information and URL.

I know some of you are saying… “I don’t know how to write an article” … well, your not alone.

Here are a few resources I’ve put together for you so you can get the basic idea of How-To structure your articles with ease or get someone else to write them for you.

The first is an article I wrote called… THE 7 Step Formula For Writing POWERFUL Articles In Less Than An Hour.

It will show you How-To structure your articles for easy writing. http://www.internetwondersezine.com/article_ 11.html

The second resource is Elance.com - http://www.elance.com - which is basically a place where you can go and submit a project by category and freelance writers, etc. will then bid on your project. You pick the winner and you set the budget.

This will get you started in the right direction.

Remember, your article is the Nuts and Bolts of this ‘Back Linking’ strategy, so make sure you put some effort into it to get it as much exposure as possible.

Step #2. Submit your article to Article Directories.

This is the next step and an important one at that because this is where your article or articles are going to get picked up by website owners and/or ezine publishers who are in constant need of fresh, quality information to feed their audiences hunger for information.

There are literally hundreds of Article Directories out there and thousands of ezine publishers looking for quality content on a daily basis. And if they choose your article for publication, they must include your ‘Resource Box’ with your websites information and URL.

It’s all about the numbers. The more Article Directories and websites you submit your articles to, the more potential Backlinks you’ll get to your website.

And since Article Directories have recently adopted RSS (Real Simple Syndication) technology into the mix your articles will even get More mileage without you lifting a finger, creating even more Backlinks to your website.

More on RSS in a minute.

Are you starting to see the Power behind writing your own articles.

I hope so.

Step #3. Create your own RSS Feed for your articles.

This last step is a very Powerful step as well.

What you need to do is set up your own RSS Feed for your articles.

Now, if you don’t know what RSS is here’s the basic definition…

RSS is by definition - an acronym for ‘Real Simple Syndication’ or ‘Rich Site Summary’, and the .XML extension is the format used for distributing your news headlines via the Web, which is known as ‘Syndication.

‘Syndication’ is where the TRUE power of RSS is unleashed, getting your message or information across the web in an INSTANT to websites, subscribers and/or readers who subscribed to your RSS Feed.

The easiest way for you to do this is to set up your own Blog either through…

Wordpress.org - http://www.wordpress.org

Or through…

Blogger.com - http://www.blogger.com

Wordpress is a little more advanced so I recommend if you don’t have alot of experience with Blogs or installing scripts that you go set up a Blogger blog which will only take you less than 5 minutes to do.

I’m just giving you some options, that’s all.

Once you’ve set up your Blog the only thing left for you to do is add you articles.

TIP: Make sure you hyperlink your URL and use Anchor Text with your most targeted keywords. By doing this the Search Engine spiders will rank your website higher under that keyword term you specify in your Anchor Text.

After you’ve added your articles all you have to do now is submit your new RSS Feed to RSS Directories and RSS Search Engines.

Here’s a few resources for you to get started with.

Ping-O-Matic - http://pingomatic.com

RSS Top 55 - http://www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

That’s it.

Now I know I dumped alot of information on you within this article so just take it Step-By-Step because once you implement it properly it will benefit you for years to come with Backlinks to your website and FREE targeted traffic via the Search Engines, Website Owners and eZine Publishers.