by: Neil Stelling

Many people know that link building plays a vital part in high search engine rankings. But it must be done right. Otherwise, sites with fewer links will rank higher than yours ! How is that possible ? Let me explain.

Google made links important a couple years ago. They started to virtually ignore on-page factors (keyword density, title etc.) and focused almost exclusively on Links.

Google counts number of links to a web page (link popularity) and what those links say about a page (link reputation).

* Link Popularity and Link Reputation

So there's a common first mistake. Many people don't know the difference between link popularity and link reputation. They think any link's good. Did you know that 20 links, with the hyperlink text containing your keyphrase, can outrank 50+ links without a keyphrase ?

note: keyphrase means the words you want your page to rank high for e.g. if someone searches on the keyphrase 'email marketing' then you want most of the links pointing at your page to say, 'email marketing' in their hypertext link.

Ever wondered why only your home page gets traffic ? People get links to their home page only, and don't even know they're making a mistake ! Google, in particular, sees a web site as a collection of individual pages, with each one ranking individually.

So, for example, if your home page gives info on 'email marketing', then you want lots of links saying, 'email marketing'. If one of your sub-pages gives info on 'email software' then that page needs its own set of links saying, 'email software'. Most people think any high ranking for their home page will automatically mean high ranking for other pages in the same web site. It doesn't. Each page ranks individually.

* Internal Link Structure

Link Building isn't just about external links. You need the right link structure within your own site. Many people make the mistake of using graphic navigation bars. Search Engines often can't even follow these links, so your sub- pages don't even get indexed. It's beyond the scope of this article to get into detail on the important internal linking structure, but you can make a good start by using text links instead of, or in addition to, graphical navigation links. Then the search engines can follow your links.

* On-Page Factors

Finally, not all search engines treat Links with the same importance as Google. Yahoo, MSN, Inktomi make much more use of on-page factors. And guess what ? You control on- page factors, so there's no excuse for getting this wrong. Be sure to get your keyphrase into title, description, headings and body text. Don't overdo it and try to spam the search engines with excessive use of keyphrases, but be sure they know what your page is about.

With the right link building strategy, your search engine rankings will soar, and you'll start getting all those visitors that will electrify your web business.

Directory submission is proven to be a vital part of every successful link building strategy for gaining quality incoming back links. Apart from driving traffic to your website through direct referrals, web directories provide static, one-way links to your site, boosting your link popularity and getting high search engine rankings and good page rank on the major search engines like Google and Yahoo.

For example, Add2Directory.com offer professional, manual directory submission service to save you time and improve your chances of getting listed. Just fill out a simple form and they will manually submit your site to hundreds of seo-friendly web directories for you. Surely, you can go to their site and submit your site to each directory with a directories list yourself, but I think you have better things to do with your time!

Similar to directory submission service, Add2Directory.com also provide article submission service. With article submission, you can build links with content, getting traffic and better one-way links to your site.

Directories also come in many different forms and topics. Most directories
accept most types of sites that are submitted to them and they then also have a lot of sites submitted to them. It sometimes can be very difficult to go through these directories trying to find what you are looking for as there are so many different sites submitted. Other directories are tried to limit
themselves to a special niche. It could as an example is a directory that is
only accepting submissions from sports sites or about bakery. There are as many different topics as there as sites. It is usually a good idea to submit to the directories that are for a special topic as if people are looking for bakery sites it is very likely that they would visit an bakery directory to find some different bakery sites. One of the most common niche among directories is the business niche. Lately a lot of sites are aiming at companies and businesses to submit their sites to the directory.

Directory and Tools and Hardware Directory. If you have a site within these topics then it is an really good idea to submit your site to the Wamchu
directory.

by: James Day

When you begin the task of acquiring quality and relevant backlinks to your website there are many factors that can increase or decrease your search engine rankings. This article outlines the difference between good and bad backlinks.

A quality backlink pointing to your site should be in the same category and relevant in content to your website. The page where your link is located should be indexed by Google and the page should also have a Google page rank. The webpage where your link is located should also contain no more than 30 other out-going links to other websites. Link pages with more than 30 out-going links are less relevant to the search engines. Having your link posted on this type of webpage can affect your search engine rankings in a negative way. Other excellent techniques of acquiring backlinks are directory submissions, posting articles, blogs and forums.

For directory submissions select the proper directory category and take a look at how many other websites are contained in the category where your link would be posted, if you can manage to get on the first or second page of the listings, this is a quality backlink. Also look at the Google page rank of the landing page for your link. If the page has a Google page rank this is also a quality backlink.

Stay within your category, relevant content is very important to the search engines. Write an article preferably relevant in content to your website and submit the article to high quality article directories. Blogs are an excellent way to get quality one-way backlinks, Blog sites also receive tons of traffic, which in turn give your site more exposure. Posting your link on forum pages is also an efficient method of acquiring backlinks instantly.

Backlinks to avoid would be a 0 page ranked webpage, especially if the home page has a zero page rank. Links posted within framed webpages which will also steal your traffic. Especially avoid link farms, webpages which contain more than 100 unrelated outgoing links, This type of link page is frowned upon by many major search engines. Avoid Webpages with mirror sites containing the exact same content with a different URL, also pages that utilize redirects and URL cloaking. Never post your link on a webpage that contains a "no follow" or "no index" robots meta tag within the source code. Dynamic websites with question marks in the URL should be avoided because they are not always indexed by the search engines.

Also avoid posting your link on a page that opens very slow or contains mostly ads and flash banners. Try not to aquire or purchase great numbers of backlinks in a short period of time, backlinks should be accumulated gradually. Also avoid webpages and directories that list their results in alphabetical order, as their database increases your link could be moved to a less relevant page with less pagerank. Quality backlinks are one of the most important factors involved in the process of acheiving high search engine ranking.

Link building is such an important area of owning a business website. It’s a great way to promote your site and your business. And it is also critical for search engine rankings. Think of link building as networking for your site. The more people that know about your site and can find it the better.

Like networking, link building is fairly simple. It’s all about communication. The drawback – you have to invest a lot of time. Here is the basic process of link building. You need to find websites that you would like to link with. You have to make a request to get a link from theses sites. Then you have to wait for an answer to your request. You have to manage the links on your site. Finally you have to make sure that the link is actually in place. As you can see from this process it relies to a great deal on other people’s participation. This is where it gets tricky as there are no guarantees that people will work with you or help you.

The easiest way to build links for a new site is through a directory submission program. The best links for your site are one way non-reciprocated links; in other words a vote for your site from another site that you haven't paid for through a reciprocated link. Directories are ideal for this as they are authority sites that will hand non-reciprocated links to websites. Not only this, but directories are still used extensively by searchers due to the way the data is presented.

Unscrupulous people have come up with ways to artificially build links without all this work. These link packages or link ‘farms’ can get you a lot of links quickly, but they can also get your site banned by the search engines. It is suspected that Google also have a link filter in operation as part of their current algorithm. It looks like this penalizes any sites that build links too quickly or if these links seems unnatural. This type of link building campaign is to be avoided.

As you have probably observed in life there are not many ‘get rich quick’ systems that really work. The same holds for link building. The truth of the matter is that you get out of it what you put into it. There is no getting around putting in hard work and time to link building. The good news is that this effort pays real dividends for your business as the links you build will be natural, long lasting and of value to you.