Increasing the number of links pointing to your site can be difficult. It is an important step in ranking well, because it helps promote the relevance and popularity of your site.

Web Directories, forums and blogs

Submitting your site to directories is a good start. Dmoz.org is used by other sites, such as Google, to display content. Besides the link they also increase chances of receiving traffic.

Other then submitting your site to web directories you can include your site as a signature in forum posts, and blog posts. Make sure to make the site reference an HTML link or the search engines will not crawl the link.

Example of a link:

“<a href=’http://mydomain.com’ title=’Description text’>http://mydomain.com</a>”

Also, make sure to use this technique appropriately. For example, formatting the link in a giant font size can give your site a bad image and may cause the post to be removed.

Link Exchange

Another method of gaining external links is link exchanges. Below are some notes on link exchanges:

What is a link exchange?

A link exchange requires two or more sites to agree to display each other’s links on a link page.

What is important about a link exchange?

Link exchanges are normally done to help with search engine ranking and page rank.

When trying to achieve a higher search engine rank obtaining relevant external links in a link exchange is more valuable then non-relevant links.

How does a link exchange work?

When a search engine scans the sites for content the sites pointing to each other will be noted, and it will give the sites more weight in importance to the keywords the sites contain.

Link values still apply to a link exchange. Exchanging links to a relevant site has more value then exchanging with a site that is irrelevant to the information contained in your site.

In Summary:

• Links can be gained by submitting your site to web directories, forums and blogs
• Posted links should be an HTML link so they can be crawled by search engines
• Posts should be appropriate and not SPAM
• Link exchanges are a mutual agreement to display each other’s links on a page
• Link exchanges are done to increase the number of inbound links a site has
• When doing looking for a link exchange to increase search engine ranking it is best to find relevant links

A standard RSS feed gives out a limited amount of information, which includes a title, link and description. This allows external sites to populate their pages with content and if a user on their sites wants to see all the data they click on the link specified in the RSS feed, which will send them to your site.

RSS feeds allow you to:

• Share content on your site
• Advertise your article; receive an inbound link while giving other sites content.
• Allow users to add your RSS feed to their browser as a ‘live bookmark’ (Mozilla) or a feed to Internet Explorer

For example, if you had an article regarding advice on successful internet marketing or perhaps a special recipe for meatloaf you would have the following information in your feed:

Title: Top 5 Internet Marketing Tips

Link: http://www.domain.com/article.html

Description: Short teaser article or quick description goes here

Title: Special Meatloaf Recipe

Link: http://www.domain.com/article.html

Description: Short teaser article or quick description goes here

Depending on what the RSS feed is for the description field can be a one-line description of the article or it can be a snippet or summary from the article.

Using RSS For Content

Sites like msn.com and Yahoo! use RSS feeds to populate their pages with content. One problem with displaying RSS feeds on your own site is the links will take your web users to other sites, so it is important to weigh your options and what is more important before using RSS feeds.

RSS feeds to use for your own site can be found in many different places. Yahoo! has many feeds you can select from.

RSS Feeds With Browsers

Firefox and Internet Explorer each have their own versions of RSS support. Internet Explorer will add the RSS feed to a list like a bookmark and you can access them and view a formatted display of the feed.

Firefox has ‘live bookmarks’ which can sit in your favorite list or on the browser toolbar. ‘Live bookmarks’ allow you to go to the link of a specific RSS item. This is a nifty tool, because instead of having a static bookmark that only points to a single page the user has a selection of pages to visit that changes.

In Summary:

• RSS are a way to share information
• RSS gives other sites content while giving your site a link back
• RSS gives you the ability to populate your site with content

Compatible browsers allow users to add your RSS feed to their favorites

A key feature to keeping a steady flow of web traffic is giving users a reason to return. By keeping your site populated with new, and current content users will have a reason to come back. Promote a service, keep your users update or even educate users on new trends or technologies.

What is a blog?

The word ‘Blog’ derived from ‘Web Log’. The most common form of a blog is a written form that acts as a journal or online diary, using links, photos as well as audio and video. A large feature of many blogs is the ability to leave comments and participate in a discussion.

Your Blog

When a blog is hosted on your website that content is picked up by search engines, which will give your site more weight and relevance.

Other Blogs

Besides the beneficial content, blogs are also a means to receive inbound links. By posting your link in a blog you are creating your own inbound links. Be cautious though, you do not want to spam other sites in the process of gaining inbound links.

Blog Information

To name a couple blog solutions, Google has their own blog product/service called ‘Blogger’ (http://www.blogger.com) and WordPress (http://www.wordpress.com) has their own product/service.

Google now gives users the ability to display their blog on a domain of their choice. WordPress allows you to download their blog script (PHP based) and use it on your domain.

In Summary:

• Blogs give your site content that is searchable and a reason for users to revisit
• Blogs can be used to receive inbound links

Directory sites present a structured list of sites on the web sorted by category. There are countless directory sites on the web, some specific to a category such as ‘East Coast Restaurants’ to general directories such as Dmoz.org or Yahoo! Directory (http://dir.yahoo.com).

Some directories are free, some require payment to be listed and some require a link back to them on the home page.

When submitting a site to a directory you must first decide which category the site belongs under. With many directory sites you may only submit a site once.

Submitting a site can get confusing when the directory structure starts getting very detailed. You want to make sure to place the site under a category that touches on all of the services or information provided within the site. For example, a store selling jewlry, clothing and handbags may not want to put themselves under a Jewelry category since they sell other items. On the other hand, if jewelry is their strong point it may be the right choice.

If the category splits off into regional categories should you place your site under a specific city or a county?

If the web site is ‘X City Plumbing Inc’ and appears to be focused on serving that specific city then it would be placed under that city category.

Dmoz.org is maintained by moderators, so if ‘X City Plumbing Inc’ was submitted to a county and the moderator found this to be inappropriate the site may be moved to the city category anyway. This is something to keep in mind when deciding the focus of the site.

“Get your site submitted to thousands of directories!” – Quantity is not necessarily a bad thing in this case, but you will need to make sure that the site is submitted to quality directories as well.

The major thing to look out for is having your site submitted to directories that aren’t browsed and don’t get scanned. Even though the link may be there the search engine will never account for it.

In Summary:

• Directories can be free or require payment or a link exchange
• Some directories can be for a specific interest while others are general
• Make sure to submit your site to an appropriate category
• Even though quantity is good, make sure to post to directories that will be searched

Even if a site is optimized for keywords and content it will not necessarily rank well. Search engine ranking is a popularity contest. One item that can make a site more popular then another is the inbound links it is receiving from other sites. This is where the importance of being linked to comes in.

Links can be separated into two categories; internal and external.

Internal links – Links pointing to pages within the same domain

www.domainabc.com/about.html (links to) www.domainabc.com/company.html

subdomain1.domainabc.com/specials.html (links to) www.domainabc.com/featured.html

External links – Links pointing to an entirely different domain

www.domainabc.com/links.html (links to) www.domainxyz.com

www.domainxyz.com/articles.html (links to) www.domain123.com

Site link value varies depending on keyword relevance and ranking among other factors. Because relevance is an important factor a site that is about home gardens linking to a web security site would have less linking value then a networking security site with similar search engine ranking would. Again, there are many factors that make a link’s value.

There are other factors that increase the relevance of links. The following are ways to give more detail to what a link is pointing to, and in return they give additional weight to the relevance of the link.

Keep in mind this information implies to internal and external links.

A – Link Text

<a href=’http://www.domainABC.com/links.html’ title=’Discount Affordable Shoes’> Buy Affordable Shoes</a>

Instead of having the link text say ‘Click here’, specifying something more detailed in the link text will give the link more relevance.

B – Title Attribute

<a href=’http://www.domainABC.com/links.html’ title=’Discount Affordable Shoes’>

The title attribute can be used as an alternative for link text in case the link is an image or there is no way of getting around the non-specific text ‘click here’.

C – Page Name

<a href=’http://domainABC.com/shoe_pricing.html’ title=’Compare Shoe Prices’>Compare And Save</a>”

Characters such as ‘-‘ and ‘_’ are treated as spaces by search engines. So the page this link is pointing to would be seen as ‘Shoe Pricing’. This gives the page a little more relevance.

Make sure not to be too redundant with the keywords used in a page. Using the same phrase or keywords excessively can flag the page as spam.

The above are more or less link enhancements. They alone will not make a site shoot up to the top ranking of a search, but they are important and should be used when possible.

In Summary:

• Both external and internal links improve a site’s rank
• Relevance is a factor that plays in a links value to another site
• Adding keywords in the title attribute, file name and link text improves relevance

There are many ranking tools out there by different companies. The one that we will be focusing on in this article is Google’s Page Rank (PR) system.

PR can be viewed by using the Google toolbar (http://toolbar.google.com). There are also sites on the web that will let you look up PR.

The PR system gives website pages a rank between one and ten, ten being the highest. PR is not a replacement of finding a site’s search engine rank on Google, but it is used for link exchanges, which will be discussed later. In fact PR is something separate from a site’s ranking on search engines, it is a calculation of how many pages are being linked together. The links may not be relevant, and as a result just because a page has a high PR doesn’t mean it will rank higher in a search then another page with a lower PR.

Here is a quick list of some sites and their PR:

• http://www.google.com/ (10)
• http://www.msn.com/ (9)
• http://slashdot.org/ (9)
• http://microsoft.com (10)
• http://yahoo.com (9)

Keep in mind that the page itself is given a PR. For example, the homepage of msn.com is 9, but http://movies.msn.com/movies/ drops down to a 6.

In Summary:

• Page rank is based on a scale of 1 to 10 and reflects a pages link popularity
• Page rank is based on quantity not quality; link relevance does not matter

Keyword campaigns can be both exciting and overwhelming. With the power to target a specific region and a specific audience, these campaigns can help boost a site’s traffic significantly.

Submitting your site to sponsored ad campaigns is an easy way to get traffic to your site, but there are a few things to keep in mind:

• You are paying for each click made to your ad
• Once the campaign ends that source of traffic is gone
• Ad campaigns rely on keywords; make sure you use appropriate keywords.

Here is a list of the popular ad campaigns/sponsored ads:

Google Sponsored Ads (Adwords):
https://adwords.google.com

Yahoo Sponsored Ads:
http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com

MSN Sponsored Ads:
http://advertising.microsoft.com

Each service has their own form of keyword estimators and tools to help you find appropriate keywords to use in the ad campaign.

One important item to keep in mind is why potential users will use specific keywords. Would you rather spend $100 on users that are just clicking an ad for information and have no intentions on purchasing your service/product or spend $100 on users that are clicking the ad to purchase your service/product? For this reason making your keywords specific for information related traffic or traffic that is seeking to purchase is important.

To figure out what type of traffic your keywords are attracting you should review web stat logs and even ad Google’s Analytics (http://www.google.com/analytics/).

Finding a set of keywords that best fits your site can be a challenging feat. In most cases finding the right keywords is a matter of trial and error, and may take some time to weed out words and phrases that are doing your site no good.

Relevance

Make sure the keywords are relevant to what content you will be displaying. If the site is selling shoes using keywords that relate to shoes, such as brand names and types of shoes would be fine. Unless the page contained content about exercise and dieting, adding ‘Atkins Diet’ or ‘South Beach Diet’ would probably not be appropriate.

Competition

A good way to get a feel for what your keywords should be is taking a peek at your competitions keywords. Open their site and observe what they are using for their page titles, Meta tags and specially formatted text.

Sub Pages

The last thing I will cover is keywords for sub pages. You should have keywords in mind not just for the site in general but for all sections throughout your site. Keep in mind that each page has its own chance of ranking in a search engine.

Pages under a section that is trying to sell a product or service should use keywords that are more focused on selling; ‘Affordable’, ‘discount’, ‘low price’.

In summary:

• Make sure the keywords are relevant to the content on the page
• Get ideas by checking similar sites
• Put together a list of specific and non-specific keywords that can be applied to sub pages.

Now that you have your keywords it is time to use them in your site. For starters, the important keywords should be placed in the page title. Try fitting keywords together to make a phrase.

“<title>SiteABC.com – Discounted Affordable Shoes</title>”

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