Towards A Healthy Economy + Marketing World

Most of you have seen those little award graphics on web sites.
They are given to the web site by another web site or award
association to reward the web site for a specific reason. They
usually link right to the site that has given the award.

These award sites are drawing tons of traffic to their own web
site. The reason is because all the web sites who get the awards
are linking right back to them by posting the award on their web
site.

What is stopping you from offering other awards to other web
sites? You could design a graphic for the award. The graphic
could include something that will draw them to your web site.
Have an online form at your web site so other people can enter
to qualify for the award. You then judge all the entrees and
pick a winner. You give them the award graphic with a link
included. They post it on their web site and now they’re linking
your web site.

You could offer web site awards for many reasons. The web site
might offer outstanding and original content. The design of the
web site could be very professional. It could have a fast load
time. It could include original web features that aren’t found
on most web sites. The site may be easy to navigate through.

Let’s say you give out 20 web site awards a week. In a year that
would be 1040 people linking to your web site. If you received 2
hits a week from each link, that would be 104 hits a year from
each award you have given. That equals an extra 108,160 hits to
your web site a year!

When shopping online for Link Management Software that can help
create and automate your links directory, some important
features that you should look for are as follows:

Create the links page based on your own template.

Allow addition or removal of links at the click of a button and
have the links page rebuilt.

Allow webmasters to submit their site.

Notify you when a webmaster has submitted their site and give
you the option of accepting or rejecting their submission.

Automatically check whether link partners linked back to you.

Help to automate the process of finding new partners.

Be easy to install.

The key to success for a website or online business is good
search engine ranking. All of the major search engines use link
popularity to determine how well a site will rank so the more
high quality, relevant links that lead to your site, the higher
it will rank. LinkMachine makes it easy to get the links you
need .

LinkMachine is a link exchange management software that makes it
easy to find and contact quality link partners, generate custom
link pages that match your site, and keep track of reciprocal
links. LinkMachine automatically updates your link pages the
instant they’re changed - no uploading required. Link exchanges
increase a site’s targeted traffic, search engine ranking, and
sales

LinkMachine finds hundreds of popular, relevant sites to
potentially exchange links with. Invite the webmasters of these
sites to exchange links, using LinkMachine’s fast e-mail
templates. Generate custom link pages that perfectly match the
look of your site. And keep track of each reciprocal link to
your site.

LinkMachine is a Php application that runs on your web server.
So it can automatically update your link pages the moment a
change is made - no need to upload files each time a new link is
added.

If you’ve been on the internet very long at all, you know that
one of the very best and certainly cheapest ways of making your
web site known is by exchanging links with other sites similar
to yours. The more relevant sites that link to yours, the more
your rating will improve, the more people looking for whatever
you have will find your site, the more traffic you will get and
the more sales you will make! So just how do you go about
finding webmasters who are willing to place a link to your new
site onto their site? When your site is brand new, your best bet
is to type your key words or phrases into a search engine and
see what comes up. The sites you see on the first few pages have
made it to the top of the search engine rankings. Go to the
sites and look around on the home page for the phrase “links
exchange” or sometimes just “links.” They will have instructions
for how to place their site on yours, and instructions on the
information they need from you in order for them to place a link
to your site on theirs. Always remember that the Golden Rule
applies here. You want them to place a link to you on their site
so you need to reciprocate. If you are uncomfortable with the
content of their links page and would prefer not to be
associated with that site, then just move on. There are millions
of others. Some of the higher ranked sites will have non-content
related restrictions about with whom they will exchange links.
They will only exchange with you if your site and/or links pages
have achieved a certain Google PageRank. (*More about that
later.) If you encounter such a site, graciously just move on.
Don’t waste your time linking to them or requesting a reciprocal
link because they will most likely ignore you. For instructions
on Keeping Track Of Your Links Exchanges, please follow the link
to another article that I wrote. Trust me on this one; you need
to keep track. You will eventually have many many pages with
similar sounding titles and URL’s and they will all begin to
swim around in your mind. Only a savant could keep it straight!
OK. Now your site has been up and running for awhile and you
would like to focus your search on exchanging links with sites
that have a higher PageRank. Repeat your very first steps of
typing your key words or phrases into a search engine and see
what comes up. It may or may not be the same sites you saw
before, but it will be the current top ranked sites for those
key words. Go to the first site just as before, but this time
click on the little blue icon on your Google toolbar (if you
don’t have the Google tool bar click here to download it.) You
will see a dropdown menu with 4 items on it. Click on “backward
links” and you will get a page of web sites that looks like a
regular Google search but is really all of the web pages with a
PageRank of at least 4 that have linked back to the site you
started with. Go to each of those sites and request to exchange
links with them. The procedure is the same, but all of these
sites and pages will have a PageRank of at least 4 and the more
pages ranked at least 4 that link back to you, the higher your
site will be rated. Just keep plugging away at it. It is tedious
to the max, but free (unlike some programs on the market) and
effective. At some point in time, other webmasters will begin to
contact you requesting to exchange links. Ta-daahhh! You’ve made
it! The first thing you need to do is visit their site. Is their
site relevant to yours? Are you comfortable putting a link to
their site on yours? Would you want your Grandma to visit your
site and follow that link? If the answer is yes, then put up the
link. E-mail them back to thank them for the offer and to let
them know where on your site you put their link. If you are not
comfortable putting the link on your site, don’t worry about it.
You will get requests from people who obviously didn’t read that
you prefer not to link to casinos and Viagra sites or whatever,
and you will get requests to exchange links with sites that have
absolutely nothing to do with your site’s subject matter. Just
ignore them, or you could reply and politely decline. Now here
comes some more Golden Rule stuff. NEVER turn down somebody
because their site or links page isn’t ranked high enough!
Remember that you once had a whole site of “0” ranked pages and
were so grateful for any of the exchanges you could get. Return
the favor. Remember that you were new once and others helped
you. Remember that the “Big Kahunas” on the internet were new
once and had “0” ranked pages that are now very highly ranked.
That new person you agree to link to today could be tomorrow’s
next “Big Kahuna.” Remember that Google has pulled the rug out
from under people before and likely will do it again. Today’s
top site could be tomorrow’s cellar dweller, and next week some
site could shoot out of nowhere to the top. You don’t have to
put their “0” page on your “6” or “7” home page, but do exchange
links with them somewhere on your site. It’s the right thing to
do.

I have written in an article about the importance to be linked
by other web site in order to increase your link popularity. It
is related to PageRank. The more back link you get, the higher
your PageRank will be, and the higher ranking you will get in
the search engine when somebody searches your keywords. You may
easily found many of webmasters really eager to exchange links
with each other especially when the other page’s PageRank is
higher then them. Just type “link exchange” in Google you will
found thousands of them. But you must be very careful in
choosing web site to exchange link. Some of them just make your
PageRank going down into the drain by wasting your PageRank.
Firstly, what is PageRank? PageRank is a numeric value that
represents how important a page is on the web. When one page
links to another page, actually it is telling the search engine
the importance of other page. When more links a page got from
another page, it shows how important the page must be.

While surfing around looking for web sites to exchange link I
found some of webmasters doing bad thing to their link partner.
One example is to add the directory where those links are
located in disallow line in “robots.txt”.

What exactly the webmaster want to do? Actually, the webmaster
restrict any search engine’s robot from crawling into the
directory, in this case ‘linkbuilder’ directory. If you have
exchange link with this web site, the spider will not see your
link on the page, so it contribute nothing to you PageRank.
Obviously, your web page has a link to this web site (because
you exchange link with him) and the spider see it. Your web page
give a point to the web site, but the website give nothing to
yours. As a result the PR of the web site will increase, but
your web site’s PageRank will go down.

Another way of link exchange’s scam is to make your link hidden
from search engines’ spiders. The link can be hidden by putting
it inside javascript, redirect it to a php or asp process page,
instead of plain ‘a href’ HTML code. Using CSS (cascading style
sheets) also can trick your eye, which make link appear to be
correct, but in fact it is redirected to another way around
before it go to your web site.

Meta Tag also can be use by selfish web masters to hide link.
Actually it is not hide link, but instruct the search engines’
spiders to ignore any link on the page. So the spiders will not
consider the link as a point of importance of other page. The
meta tag use for this action is “nofollow”.

As a way of precaution to increase your link popularity (and
PageRank) by link exchange is you have to make sure:

1. The directory which the link is located is not restricted to
any spider (robot). On the web browser’s address bar type
http://www.websitetocheck.com/robots.txt. Check the restricted
directory.

2. Always check the source code, make sure the link is directly
pointing to your web site by ‘a href=’http://www.yourwebsite.com’

3. Check those links in weekly or monthly basis, if the link
which is pointing to your web site is missing, delete their link
on your web site.

4. Check the meta tag of the page and try to find ‘ meta
name=”robots” content=”nofollow” ‘

Mention reciprocal linking on any internet marketing forum and
you will be sure to get a barrage of heated replies. There is a
continual debate about the advantages and disadvantages involved
in reciprocal linking and both sides make convincing statements.
So, should you or should you not get involved in reciprocal
linking? Ultimately, the decision is yours but here are some
guidelines:

1. The main goal of any linking strategy is to get more traffic
to a website. Reciprocal linking can work for or against you in
this matter depending on the site that you exchange links with.
If you exchange links with sites that receive a lot of traffic,
some of that traffic may be diverted to your site. On the other
hand, if you exchange links with a low traffic site, you may
divert some of your traffic to the other site without seeing a
similar return. The solution is to exchange reciprocal links
with a site with a page rank no lower than one level below yours
and to try to exchange links with many sites with a higher page
rank. Ideally, you would seek to exchange links with sites that
have at least a PR 4.

2. Don’t exchange links with everybody that asks. What advantage
is there in exchanging links with a site that sells wedding
favors when your site is about dog training? Anyone that visits
the wedding favor site will be looking for information
concerning weddings, not dog training, and very few will click
on your link regardless of how high the page rank is for the
wedding site. The key here is to exchange links only with sites
that are relevant to your site or to your keywords.

3. Avoid exchanging links with sites that have a huge link
directory. If your site is listed on page 43 in your category of
another site’s link directory, few people will ever see your
link. Although a link will be generated to your site for the
search engines, you will not receive much traffic from the link
exchange. Try to exchange links with sites where your link will
be displayed on the first, or at the most, the second page of
another site’s link directory.

4. Build online relationships. Exchanging links with other
relevant websites is a great way to start building partnerships
with other website owners and may open the door for future joint
venture requests.

5. Build your link popularity. Most search engines view sites
that have many links to them as being important. So, the more
sites that link to your site, the higher your site might rank.
But again, make sure that all reciprocal links are relevant to
your site or the search engines will penalize you.

If you do decide to get involved in reciprocal linking, join
only well established link exchanges that allow you to approve
or disapprove the link. Avoid link farms or link exchanges that
will automatically exchange your link with their entire database
regardless of the relevancy to your website.

The optimum way to set up a link page is to enter all links
manually. Yes, it is time consuming but when you are starting
out, this is the best way to do it.

You would first need to set up a page on your website just for
your link categories. You can call this page anything you like
such as Links, My Partners, Link Partners, My Link Partners,
etc. Set up this page with the major categories and
subcategories that are relevant to your site. Then, set up a
page for each subcategory that will contain the actual links.
Test to be sure that whenever anyone clicks on a subcategory
that they are taken to the appropriate link page.

Prepare a short 3 - 5 line ad about your website or your product
and include the URL to your website. This should be in HTML code
for easy uploading. Each linking company has their own
procedure, but generally, each time you ask to exchange links,
you’ll need to copy and paste the other website’s HTML code onto
your link page under the correct category and subcategory. You
will then need to upload the updated page to your website.

Once this is done, let the other website know on which of your
pages they can find their link. If the other website owner
approves the link exchange, they should add your link to their
link page and inform you on exactly what page you can find it.

Check to make sure that your link has been added to their site.
If they have not added your link, you have the option of
contacting the website owner as to why or of removing their link
from your site.

Using articles to rank high .

Search engine rankings are very important especially if you are
selling something on internet . There are many ways of boosting
your search engine ranks . One of them is articles distribution .
Here’s how it is done to get the most of it .

Visit a few forums to find out a burning topic . Generally on a
forum , you will come across people who are trying to find
solutions to a problem . Example : How to get my website indexed
? What is a good navigation ? And there are tons of these on any
search engine forum !

Find a forum that matches your website’s theme and look into the
problems of people .

Now if you have been writing articles , then write an article explaining one
topic in detail . If you don’t have much experience in writing
articles , then hire a firm that has writers . Generaally such
firms will also distribute your article to article sites .

In the resource box of your article is a link to your website .
Make sure that your
website design is friendly . When people visit your website
it should not look like they have landed on just another website
. Instead they should feel like it is a professional website .
Remember they liked the article and now want to see what else
you got and that is why they are on your website . Present
yourself as a professional and not like a site that is built to
add to your ad sense account .

If you are writing an article yourself , then you must
concentrate on distributing it also . The more you distribute an
article , the more chances it has of getting picked up . The
first place to submit an article is to article sites . Then you
can also contact ezine owners to publish your article .

If one ezine owner agrees to publish your article , then you are
sure to recieve high traffic to your website in no time . When
you visit sites , and see a newsletter subscription box ,
contact the webmaster and ask if they are open to publish
articles of other writers . If yes , then send them your
articles in text format .

One of the best ways to optimize your business Web site for
higher search engine placement is to increase the amount of
other sites that link to you. Most search engines use the
quantity and quality of links pointing to your site to determine
how to rank your site. The more quality links pointing to your
pages, the better your placement will be. And that means more
traffic for your business.

Here is a way for other sites to link back to you.

Link Directories Link directories are the best way to get your
website noticed and other people to link back to you. Website
owners pay to have their link posted on other websites for the
purpose of linking back to your website. Find websites that sell
complementary products or provide content that is related to the
product or service that you are offering.

Listing your business in Web directories can help connect buyers
and sellers, and it has the same basic advantages as advertising
in the traditional yellow pages. Some of those advantages
include: attracting targeted customers, establish your brand,
and providing your current customers with up to date information
about your business. But online directories give you an even
greater opportunity to sell products and services because they:

1. Allows you to attract targeted customers outside of your
local area. Go nationwide, while staying local.

2. Let anyone with an Internet connection find your business
quickly and easily, usually from the comfort of their own home.

3. Provide current and potential customers with maps, driving
directions and an active link to your company’s Web site.

4. Give your company international exposure.

If you’re just starting out and your site doesn’t get a lot of
traffic, you may not get a one-to-one trade; be prepared to make
concessions, at least until you have a track record — and
traffic — to point to. That said, there are still a few
companies that won’t turn down an opportunity for more exposure,
so you’ll probably find a few that are still willing to do a
free link exchange with you. However, the number of website
owners offering free link exchanges are dwindling.

I am sure the first thought provoking question that popped into
your head would be: what exactly is PageRank? Well PageRank can
be summed up as how vital Google considers a particular webpage.
Pagerank is a value from 0-10, zero being the least significant
and ten of which few obtain being the most note-worthy. PageRank
is often abbreviated as PR and Google determines this PR bye
evaluating how many websites link to yours, even though many of
these links are missed.

Who says Google gets to play the role of big brother? Google may
be the leader that people praise and follow, yet why do
webmasters allow themselves to be caught up in this publicity
stunt? Sure it is a BASIC measurement of how much publicity a
website is getting, but what is its real purpose?

As Pagerank gains ground webmasters loose sight of what they
originally intended to accomplish. By writing this article I
hope to give webmasters the foresight to distinguish that in the
end PageRank won’t be what makes your website a success. Even
though hard work and determination may help you achieve this
success; skill, luck, and good timing play a bigger roll.

Many a-days I am sifting through my vast amount of spam mail and
occasionally receive an email entitled “link exchange.” As I am
always intrigued by possible link partners I typically read
these emails.

When I come to an email that looks generic and has 100 mailers
on the list I still give them a chance and then take a look at
there website. Upon opening the website I am disgusted by the
huge fonts and banners trying to sell me something, as a habit I
look up at my toolbar and see that this website has a Pagerank
of 6! What a possibility according to many website owners. The
only opportunity I see in these types of links are purely
PageRank building. On the other hand…

On a rare occurrence I come across an email titled “our
partnership” as this email is already more intriguing I open it
urgently and see a nice layout for this email that is directed
towards me and my website. Anyways on with my point, I go to
this website and see a terrific design plus they offer a unique
service. According to habit and maybe a bit of my obsessive
compulsive side I check the Pagerank. Humm, this website hasn’t
even been indexed by Google yet? Should I exchange links with
this website? I am sure most of you are thinking of course not,
it would benefit my website in no way. On the contrary this
website has the most potential to flourish and send you quality
targeted unique’s!

What I am trying to prove is that because of this “higher power”
aka Google PageRank people turn down websites that can provoke
there own success! Why not put Google PageRank in a state of
anarchy and let websites again be judged by there quality
content and superior design!

Directly PageRank cannot be bought, though often I see links
being sold at outrageous monthly costs on pages with a pr of 6
and up. Many times they will provide minimal traffic. Purchasing
one of these links will not bring you any targeted traffic, or
any traffic at all for that matter. A site wide link on a high
pr website can and will boost your pr, but will it help promote
and brand your website?

I am not trying to say boycott Google PageRank and start a
protest, just merely use PR as a reference but not enough to
influence you’re linking decisions and how much time you spend
on link exchanges. I hope you walk away from reading this
article with a more open mind towards linking with new websites.
Understand that every website has potential there are just
different degrees to this. You can’t earn a clients respect my
running up to there door and desperately offering them your
product, instead let them find you. Your approach to search
engines shouldn’t be any different.

Concerned about the next PR update as attempting to get those
last minute link partners up and running? Invest this time
instead on building up quality content pages and the Google will
find you!