Build Valuable Backlinks

Search engine optimization consists mainly of on page activity and off page optimization. Building backlinks is a part of off page optimization strategy. High quality backlinks have the potential to increase a websites ranking in the SERPs.

Backlinks are considered valuable when they:

a. are do follow

b. contain the appropriate anchor text,

c. are deep linked to the relevant inner pages,

d. are linked from high PR niche websites

5 Tips for Building Valuable Backlinks:

1. Perform A Competitive Intelligence Analysis

Competitive intelligence analysis allows you to scrutinize the competitors' backlinks and their link profiles. Run a Google search for your target keyword and list the top 20 competitors. Capitalize on the Yahoo! Search Explorer tool to determine the backlinks for each of the top competing websites. Use an Excel spreadsheet to make a list of all the backlinks providing websites. The next step is to shortlist the do follow websites from the list. Arrange them in the descending order of their PR. At the end of this procedure, you will have a list of highly valuable do follow websites to link from.

2. Submit URLs to Search Directories

Search directories are of two types: general and niche directories. Backlinks from niche directories are normally considered more valuable than the backlinks from general directories. Most of the search directories take months to process your linking request. There are some directories which link back within a few days. Websites which build a high number of backlinks in a few days are looked upon suspiciously by Google. The best way to build backlinks is over a period of time to avoid getting tagged as a link spammer. Submittíng a website's URL to directories is a time consuming task but provides great results at the end.

3. Submit Articles to Article Directories

Submitting articles to article directories is a very popular approach to link building. Most of the article directories allow you to include a link in the article. You can also add a link to the author description of the article with appropriate anchor text. Article directories are known to rank well in the search engine ranking pages. An added benefit of submittíng to article directories is the traffic it drives to your website. There are a large number of high quality article directories which accept free article submission. Simply sign up, verify your account and start submitting articles.

4. Post in Forums

Forums initially served as a means of conversing and solving queries. Today forums are also used to obtain valuable backlinks to your website. A majority of forums allow a signature link at the bottom of every post. This signature link is a do-follow link. You can select the desired anchor text and link to any important inner page of your website. There are a few forums which allow you to enter more than one signature link. Just remember to participate in the conversation, ask questions and answer those of others.

5. Create Link Bait

Link bait involves creating compelling content on the website which makes others link to it. You should write frequently and consistently to develop a following. Keep tab on the latest happenings and news in your niche; be among the first few to break the news online. To create that perfect link bait, your articles should contain news, updates, a controversial topic or even some great resources. Keep the information quotient of your articles high and watch the link baits pouring in.

If you want other websites and blogs to link to you, double check who you are linking too. Don't be in a rush to get backlinks. A handful of good quality and authoritative backlinks are worth more than a hundred low quality, low PR backlinks.

About The Author:

Debbie A. Everson is the CEO of SearchMar.com, experienced SEO Consultants and Search Engine Optimization Agency to over 2,000 small businesses. Learn about search engine optimization, paid search advertising, social media, and emaíl marketing. Read my SEO Blog at blog.searchmar.com for hints and tips. Follow me on Twitter @searchmar. Call 1.866.885.6263 to speak to one of our SEO Consultants. Visit www.searchmar.com.

Tips About SEO

It is not hard to be barking up the wrong tree when it comes to getting search engine traffic because there is so much out of date information being circulated.

That is why it is always best to also learn many other traffic generation methods like viral marketing for example.

Not only is there out of date or invalid SEO advice getting around, there is also information which if acted upon, can result in your pages being banned.

The SEO tips below should assist the reader in forming a basic understanding of how to create human friendly web pages which are easily understood by the most popular search engines.

Know this. There are thousands of search engines but only two of them will bring you most of the traffic. They are google and yahoo. Another search engine that brings me a little traffic is msn but I do not focus too much on tactics for that engine.

Focus your attention on the engines that will bring you the most visitors first and work your way down.

1. Insert keywords within the title tag so that search engine robots will know what your page is about.
2. Use the same keywords as anchor text to link to the page from different pages on your site.
3. Make sure that the text within the title tag is also within the body of the page.
4. Do not use the exact same title tag on every page on your website.
5. Do not spam the description or keyword meta tag by stuffing meaningless keywords or even spend too much time on this tag.
6. Do not link to link-farms or other search engine unfriendly neighborhoods.
7. Do not use doorway pages. Doorway pages are designed for robots only, not humans. Search engines like to index human friendly pages which contain content which is relevant to the search.
8. Title tags for text links. Insert the title tag within the HTML of your text link to add weight to the link and the page where the link resides.
9. Describe your images with the use of the alt tag.
10. Submit to the search engines yourself. Do not use a submission service or submission software.

One Way Linking Strategies Using Link Directories

One Way Linking Strategies Using Link Directories

Introduction:

Building high quality links to your website is one of the most important things that you can do to improve your search engine rankings. You can think of these links as votes in favor of your website (this is the way the search engines see it). Acquiring high quality links for your site can be very time consuming; however, it is a very important thing to do if you want to get great search engine rankings.

Before I continue, let me quickly define Link Popularity (link pop) for you. Link Popularity simply refers to the amount and quality of inbound links to your site. There are many free tools available on the internet for checking your link popularity.

How Link Directories Can Help You

Using link directories is one of the best ways to get quality links to your site. Just so you know, a link directory is a web site that has a large aggregation of links which are organized by topic. People who are searching for a particular type of web site will use link directories as an alternative to doing a search engine query.

There are thousands upon thousands of link directories out there to choose from. I recently typed the keywords 'link directories' in to Google and received 1,120,000 hits.

When you submít your site to a link directory, it is edited by a human. Your submission will either be accepted or rejected, depending on the quality of your site and whether it is relevant to the directory you are submitting to. If your site gets accepted, the users of the link directory will consider your site to be credible. Also, the search engines love links that point to your website from quality link directories.

You will want to have your link placed on as many link directories as you can. There are three reasons for doing this. First, you will get targeted traffíc to your site when people search the directory for your type of site. Second, you will improve your search engine rankings as your link popularity increases. Third, having links from link directories will help your web site pages to get indexed quickly.

Some Features Of Link Directories

When you submít to a link directory, you are usually given 3 choices that look something like this:

Featured Links 

Regular Links 

Regular Links With Reciprocal 

The featured links will normally keep your listing towards the top of the list. There is always a charge for featured links (this is one of the ways that link exchanges make their money). The trouble here is that if a lot of people are buying featured links for a particular category, you may still be pushed quite a way down the list.

With a lot of link directories, the regular links and the regular links with reciprocal are offered for free. When I submit to directories, I always choose regular links and I only choose free ones. Listen, there is such an overwhelming number of link directories out there, that if you start paying for your submissions, you will quickly empty your bank account. There are plenty of free ones to choose from (just type free link directories into Google, and you will be surprised at the numbers). 

A final note here is always choose the regular link (one way) as opposed to the reciprocal option. These days, search engines consider one way links to be more valuable than reciprocal links (reciprocal links are still OK, but they are not as good as one way links).

Link directories are ranked by Google just like any other web site. The range in page rank will be between 0 and 8. You will want to spread your submissions between all of the page rank values. This will make your links look more natural in the eyes of the search engines.

The Submission Process

There are basically three ways that you can carry out the submission process.

1. Sign in to your favorite search engine and type in "free link directories". You will get enough hits here to keep you busy with submitting for the rest of your days. 

2. Purchase one of the many link directory submission software packages out there. These packages are normally semi-automated and will save you a huge amount of time.

3. You can pay someone to do the submitting for you. There are plenty of web sites that will offer to do your submissions for a fee, but be careful, as some of them are quite spammy. Make sure to do your due diligence first. You should aim to do about 200 to 300 submissions per month.

Good luck with your linking campaign. Remember the importance of using link directories as a key strategy for gaining targeted traffíc to your website. 

About The Author

I live in Delta, British Columbia, Canada with my wife and 2 boys. I am a full time Paramedic and I love my career. In my spare time, I may be found flying, hiking, renovating our house or playing sports with the boys. Check out my affiliate marketing website: www.wealth-dynamo.com