Open Journalism For All - News, Documentaries And Information Services

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the
first tool that potential customers use to find the products and
services they need. This is why link popularity is so
imperative. If the customers do not find your website, you have
no possibilities of making any sales.

You’re probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a
link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the
ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it
determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered
into a search engine. So, you’re probably wondering, how do I
make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to
sites that have links to their pages from related, quality
sites. It’s a simple formula, but a very important one. Google
created the system, and now virtually all the most popular
search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to
achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is
almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search
engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are tried and true ways
of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that
just linking up with a large number of other websites will not
achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite
effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites
that are nothing more than “link farms” - pages containing line
after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may
aggressively discriminate against your website if you are
associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you
are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about
your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to
appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor
quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely
destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link
popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all
the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the
door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open
Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related,
you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that
it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well
spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free,
but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed.
Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are
business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a
lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate
category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if
your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in
the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to
“Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State.” BIG MISTAKE! All you have
to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the
“Fine Alpaca Wool” category. You will not only associate
yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a
national category.

To continue to PART 2 Click here.

This article may be freely reprinted as long as all links and
author information remain.

Try an Experiment

If you have a web site, try this experiment when you have some
spare time. Pick a nonsense phrase, like “bed happy meatball” or
anything equally silly. Make sure it’s something very unlikely
to appear on a web page anywhere, and make sure it’s a phrase
(not a single word). Also, make sure it does not appear on your
own site.

Next, get a few friends or co-workers with web sites of their
own to post a link to your site using that exact phrase (without
the quotation marks) as the anchor text. What’s anchor text, you
ask? It’s simply the word or words that form the clickable part
of a link.

Now, wait a while. Make a note to yourself to check your web
site’s ranking in the results for a search of your chosen
nonsense phrase at a major search engine in a month or two.
Unless you picked a phrase that actually appears on other sites,
you’ll find that your site is #1! Moreover, that’s in spite of
the fact that the chosen phrase does not appear anywhere on your
actual web site. Think about that.

An infamous, large-scale example of this same test involved the
phrase “miserable failure.” Some enterprising bloggers got
together a few years ago and decided to link lots of sites to
the official biography page for President George W. Bush at the
whitehouse.gov site. The goal, of course, was to make that page
show up in the #1 position whenever unsuspecting (or in this
case, many suspecting) searchers typed in that phrase. It
worked. (Side note: at last check, Michael Moore - famous film
maker and Bush detractor, was in the #2 position at Google for
this same search). Again, keep in mind that the phrase
“miserable failure” does not appear anywhere on either man’s web
site.

Is There a Point?

OK, so why bother with this seemingly asinine experiment (that’s
actually been dubbed ‘Googlebombing’)? Ahh, Grasshopper, for the
lesson it imparts. Which is? Well, it points to the power of
anchor text in determining search engine ranking. And it has
definite relevance to your activities as a webmaster.

Many of your fellow site owners - including a lot of them who
run sites in direct competition with yours - have never heard of
anchor text. Some of you reading this may be unfamiliar with it.
But, as should be clear now, anchor text plays a major role in
search engine ranking positions.

In basic terms, it works like this…

Search engines rely on links to help them ascertain both the
theme of a given web site and its popularity. Knowing that,
consider two scenarios. In the first, your site has built up a
lot of links pointing to it, and each one has your domain name
as the clickable part of the link (anchor text). Let’s say your
domain name is your company’s name, JoeSmithBakery.com - and you
sell baking supplies. OK, great - now your site will show up in
the #1 position at the search engines whenever anyone searches
for your domain name! Hmm. Think that one through. If they know
your domain name, why would they need a search engine to find it?

In the second scenario, you have lots of links pointing to your
bakery site, but instead of the domain name as the anchor text,
you wisely chose a phrase that lots of people search for, like
‘baking supplies.’

Easy question: which would you prefer - being #1 at Google when
people search for your domain name or being #1 when people
search for bakery supplies? This is why the anchor text you
choose for the links you build is so important.

A Plan of Action

Now, here’s a simple plan of action to improve your site’s link
situation and search engine ranking going forward from this
day…

Step 1 - Research Keywords

A great service is provided by the folks at wordtracker.com.
They catalog search activity at the major engines, and then make
available those numbers to the general public. You simply type
in a word or phrase related to your site’s theme, and
wordtracker shows you the number of times that entry is being
searched at the major search engines. Cool, huh? The service
will also give you a list of related terms, so you can look for
other important search words to target.

Step 2 - Pick a Few and Get Some Links

Compile a list of several search terms that are most closely
related to your site’s theme and that get searched for often.
It’s up to you, of course, but you should pick those phrases
that get a few hundred to several thousand searches. These will
be the terms you use in the anchor text of the inbound links you
build from now on. Doing so will really increase your site’s
search engine traffic - once all your new links begin to boost
your rankings.

Nothing Else Changes

Now, just carry on with your usual link building activities:
reciprocal links, one-way links from directories and article
distributions, etc. The only change is to make sure you choose a
phrase from your list to use as the clickable part of the link
you ask for (the anchor text). If you rotate your choices, your
site will move up in the rankings for each phrase. The only
downside is that you’ll be getting fewer links per phrase, so it
may take longer for any single phrase to rank high.

Keep in mind that the phrases you pick will be popular, unlike
those in the examples that began this article. To score high
rankings, you’ll need to be diligent and get lots of links.
Never stop! Over time, this strategy will really help your
site’s traffic, but it does take time. As the famous poet, Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow, famously wrote: “All good things come to
those who wait.”

© John Schwartz http://www.web-article-w
riter.com (all rights reserved)

I was going through my link exchanges today and noticed an
alarming trend that some webmasters are doing. They’re setting
their robots.txt file to Disallow indexing their Link pages.

We all know that good links can help build traffic and boost
your sites importance in search engines…but what does this
mean?

It means that some sites are getting huge PageRank ratings from
their exchanges, but they are not returning the favor to the
Honest Webmasters.

Tsk tsk tsk….I was going to put a link to my Internet
Marketing website to one of these sites… but as soon as I
found out that they were using this trick I stopped.

It’s my opinion that it IS a trick…Honest webmasters are
trying to setup legitamite link exchanges to help out other
webmasters and people pull this.

Makes me feel bad for the webmasters who aren’t checking for
this. So, if your doing your link exchanges manually I suggest
taking the time to check the incoming links that you have
exchanged with. There are 2 quick ways to check listed below.

A site passing these 2 quick checks, is by NO MEANS a guarantee
that your getting a fair deal. But, if your like me, you tend to
trust most people so if I check a site and it passes, I’ll set
up a reciporical link to them.

The 2 simple ways to check (these are done manually) are load
the main page of the site you’ve exchanged links with and Click
on View - Source in your browser. You want to look for lines in
the Head portion that say: “robots” content=”nofollow” or
something similar.

The second way is to check their robots.txt file if they have
one.

Simply type in their address followed by /robots.txt

A Bad Robots.txt file for a link exchange would look something
like this: # All robots will spider the domain User-agent: *
Disallow: # Disallow directory /links User-agent: * Disallow:
/links # Disallow directory /link-market User-agent: * Disallow:
/link-market

You’ll note that in this example..taken from a real site that
offers link exchanges and is even brazen enough to ask for at
least PR2 links back, is specifically set to IGNORE their Links
pages!!

We’ll see what the future holds for sites like these when people
catch on to what their doing.

Till next time…be safe and watch your links!

Check out my homepage if you’re looking for more information
like this: Internet Marketing

There are two tactics that you have probably heard a lot of
these days: AFFILIATE PROGRAMS and OPT-IN EMAIL. No doubt these
are two POWERFUL tools of generating online income and sales.
There is a catch though… they only work if you are ALREADY
getting the necessary traffic to your web site.

So, like all other new e-business owners, you must be stressing
over ways to get, not JUST traffic to your website, but
TARGETTED TRAFFIC! Really, it is simpler and cheaper than you
think! The key is to FOCUS your efforts. Don’t try and do
everything at once. Take one step at a time. This way you will
get BETTER results.

METHOD 1: Advertise in Newsletters and E-Zines

Carefully choose which newsletters and e-zines you wish to
purchase your ad space with. Choose ones that have subscribers
that match or almost match your target market. They must be
people who could potentially be your customers. Choose ones with
a medium to large subscriber-base. This way you will get you
investments worth. Take note of where your ad will be placed. It
could be at the top, middle, bottom…anywhere in the
newsletter. The best spots are at the top of the newsletter and
on a page where readers are most likely to spend most of their
time at. Also take note of other ads that might be surrounding
yours. You don’t want to place your ad next to a competitor’s.
This will lessen your chances of potential clicks. The size of
your ad also influences the location of your ad.

METHOD 2: Use Keywords and a Crawler Page to Secure that Top
Spot in Search Engines

Your target market will NEVER find your web site if you have
been using the WRONG keywords! Search engines look for them in
your Title Tags, Meta Tags, and the body of your text when
ranking and categorising your web site.

When choosing keywords, be sure not to choose words that are
highly competitive like business, books, software. These are too
generic and will make it super difficult for you to secure that
top spot! In order to find TARGETED keywords that are suitable
for YOUR web site, sit down and have a good and long think of
what someone looking for your site might type into the search
engines. Remember, no one knows your business more than YOU! Ask
around; ask your family and friends what THEY might type when
looking for your product or service. Be SPECIFIC yet GENERAL.
For example if your site offers services to help businesses go
online, you might use the following keywords: online business,
online businesses, start online business, online business help,
online business services etc. Use as many variations of your
keywords as possible and include your company name and region if
applicable. Also, study what keywords your competitors are using
on their web sites.

Most search engines like Alta Vista and Yahoo ask that you
submit just one URL and that they will follow all the links and
find the rest of the pages in your web site. You can make it
easier for them by creating a page called a CRAWLER PAGE with
links to all of the most important parts of your site and submit
that instead. Thus, ensuring that the right pages will be
noticed.

To create a Crawler Page in Internet Explorer: 1. Choose
Favourites > Organise Favourite A dialog box appears. 2. CLICK
on Create Folder and give your folder a name e.g. “Site Crawler
Page” 3. CLOSE the dialog box. 4. Go to the pages on your site
that you want to be sure the site engine finds. 5. Choose
Favourites > Add to Favourites A dialog box appears. 6. Click on
Create in<< and choose your crawler folder e.g. "Site Crawler
Page". 7. Click OK. 8. When you have finished adding all the
pages you want, choose File >Import and Export. 9. An
Import/Export Wizard will appear. Use it to create an HTML file
of your crawler page favourites folder. 10. Upload the page to
your server and submit it to the search engines you want to be
listed on.

You might want to register your site with a search engine that
specialises in your particular topic. Yahoo has a very complete
list of specific category search engines. Wordtracker is a
powerful free service that can help you find out which keywords
will skyrocket your traffic and boost your ranking in search
engines. Visit http://www.wordtracker.com/ for more information
on Wordtracker.

METHOD 3: Place Links in Related Web Sites

Persuading other related sites in your industry to link to YOU
is another effective way of directing highly targeted traffic to
your web site. Many marketing gurus will agree that it is
carries the same effect as a personal recommendation. A link
from another highly respected source creates your credibility
even BEFORE the visitor reaches your web site, hence increasing
their potential to become your customer!

Make sure you do your RESEARCH and when you have found the web
sites that deal directly with your target market, don’t forget
to record down the contact information for the web site owners.
When you contact them, show them how your web site will benefit
THEM and THEIR visitors. Don’t talk about how you will benefit
and how fantastic your web site is. Explain WHAT’S IN IT FOR
THEM!

So there you go! 3 simple ways to get that targeted traffic to
your web site! You already have the killer web site and the
product/ service that people want AND you can get the targeted
TRAFFIC to your web site and covert your visitors to paying
customers!

Now you can start growing your own opt-in email list and advance
to affiliate programs!

One of the most popular methods of traffic generation is the
link exchange. Not only can they generate fairly targeted
traffic from other related web sites, the number of quality
links to your site is also a major factor determining your web
site’s ranking in major search engines like Google.

The problem with link exchanges is that they require you to give
a reciprocal link in exchange for linking to your site. This
inevitably means that there will be a limit to the number of
links you can tastefully place on your site without compromising
your layout, content, and credibility. Links to other sites also
provide extra temptations for surfers to leave your site. Also,
search engines place more importance on the quality than the
number of sites linking to your web site. It is of course
difficult for small web sites to convince large, successful web
sites to exchange links with them.

An incredibly simple, but little used so is to use testimonials
to gain a link on large successful web sites, WITHOUT having to
place a reciprocal link on our own site! No webmaster, no matter
how successful, can resist an honest, glowing compliment to
their creation. The trick is to write short, flattering
testimonials for the content, design, functions, products,
services etc. of many web sites and send it to them as a sincere
“feedback”.

Many webmasters will feel so flattered and want to publish these
“unsolicited” compliments to reinforce the credibility of their
web site and products. To make the testimonial credible, they
must naturally mention who it came from.

This would be your opportunity to request a link to your web
site. At a minimum, you should be able to get a link in the form
of “yourname, webmaster, yoursite.com “. This is really a
beautifully simple, no cost way of getting links in many high
quality web sites.

Once your website is up and raring to go, it is important to
start formulating a marketing strategy. The obvious goal is to
attract as many visitors as you can. One of the best ways to do
this is through a “Linking Campaign”.

In order to begin your campaign, you must first understand the
difference between reciprocal and non-reciprocal links. A
reciprocal link simply means that two websites are linking to
each other. Both sites generate traffic for each other
simultaneously. This follows the philosophy of, “You scratch my
back, and I’ll scratch yours.” A non-reciprocal link refers to a
website that links one-way. A good linking strategy is to create
as many inbound non-reciprocal links as possible, with some
strategically chosen reciprocal links as well.

Nowadays, search engines are incredibly smart. The positioning
of your site depends a great deal upon how many people link to
your site. A lot of non-reciprocal inbound links tells a search
engine that your site contains valuable information. After all,
who’s going to recommend your site without reciprocation unless
they believe it will benefit their readers?

On the other hand, a website with a bunch of reciprocal links
could indicate that the webmaster solicits links. This means
topics and information may or may not be connected, and the
probability that it’s a valuable site diminishes. To determine
this, search engines then look for key word connections between
reciprocal links to determine if the sites are in fact
benefiting each other.

The key is: choose your reciprocal links wisely. Connect only to
websites that contain related information that readers will
enjoy. Spend your time cultivating valuable information on your
site, and then tell everyone you can! If you end up having more
non-reciprocal links than reciprocal links, search engines will
rate your site much higher than those that don’t.

Then the question becomes, how do you generate non-reciprocal
links? The first step is to create a site packed with valuable
information. Make your site full of interesting details that
similar sites’ readers can’t live without. If webmasters see the
benefit to linking to your site, your Marketing Campaign becomes
a snap.

When you begin, try emailing other webmasters. Tell them why
your site will be important to their readers, and make it easy
for them to say yes by including a ready-made link. You’d be
surprised at how many people agree to help!

You can also try writing a nice review of a few sites on your
webpage. Email the sites’ webmasters and let them know about
your testimonials. It’s likely that the sites will want to
advertise your nice comments to their readers by posting a link
to your review.

Finally, submit your website to as many relevant web directories
as you can. This is one of the fastest, most powerful ways to
make your website known. If you search for “web directory” on
Yahoo!, it returns over 1 million results. You can pick and
choose the ones you’d like to submit to. Unfortunately, this can
be very time consuming. Plus, with over a million results, how
do you know which directories are the best choice?

When I realized how tedious the process can be, I decided to
create a product that would make the job easier. Master
Programmer Paul Martin and I have compiled 280+ of the best
directories on the web. Visit Directory
Submitter. to find out how to instantaneously submit your
website to popular, relevant directories without the hassle.

Building a web site is only the first step in a long process
when starting an online internet business. You need traffic to
your web site and the best way to get traffic is through
incoming links from other sites.

Incoming links come in a variety of forms. Some rank higher in
quality than others as far as the search engines are concerned.
The major search engines, Google included will rank your site
higher in their listings depending on the amount of quality
incoming links you have from other sites. At the time of writing
this article it appears that incoming links that do not require
you to link back are of better quality than reciprocal linking
which does require you to link back.

One of the ways to get quality incoming links to your site
without linking back is to submit your site to as many
directories as you can. The top 2 directories are Yahoo and the
Open Directory Project. But there are literally hundreds more
directories that you can submit your site to for free. You can
find a few directories on my blog at the following link. Submit Your Site To Directories.

Another way to get good quality incoming links without linking
back is to use and take part in as many discussion groups and
forums as you can. Make sure you us the signature feature and
add a link to your website using your targeted keywords in the
signature. Each time you post in a forum you will be leaving
behind a link to your web site.

The next topic require a bit of work on your part but writing
articles like this one can create hundreds if not thousands of
incoming links to your web site. At the bottom of this article
and all other articles that I write I leave a bio or about the
author section. In this section I have links to my websites. I
post these articles everywhere in article databases and e–mail
it to newsletter publishers in the hopes that they will use my
article in their newsletter and or web site. This is so popular
right now that the pros are saying if you are not doing it you
need to be. Writing articles is difficult at times but it’s well
worth the effort.

Next make sure you have a way for people to link back to you
naturally. Place a link on your site somewhere that says link to
us and include instructions on how they should link to you. If
you have informative content and update it regularly, people
will link to your site automatically.

Last but not least there is always reciprocal linking.
Reciprocal links require a link back to the site that is linking
to you and as I mentioned earlier these links do not carry as
much weight as far as the search engines are concerned. But
reciprocal links are still a very valuable advertising and
search engine optimization technique that should not be ignored.
There are a couple rules that one should follow when using
reciprocal links. First make sure you have already added the
link to the other site before you ask for a link back. And make
sure your link page’s have no more than 50 links per page. When
using any of the above linking strategies it is very important
that you use your targeted key words in the link and not just
your web site URL. The search engines read the text between the
tags to determine what your site is all about. If your
site is about green leopard frogs then you should use green
leopard frogs in your title and between the tags.