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Ten
Steps to Building More Links to Your Website"Link building" involves getting other Web sites to link to your site. It's like one of your neighbours recommending you; it carries more weight than if a person finds your website purely by accident.
There is now much more to good search engine listings than simply optimizing your site with keywords. Search engines have been developing new ways to make search engine results more relevant to the user. In the last couple of years, links have become increasingly important to search engines because they view links as an endorsement of your web site by other Web sites. The concept is known as "link popularity." The search engines will increase or decrease your websites relevancy based on the links pointing to your site and also by keywords. It is important that you start building the right kind of links in order to improve your search-engine results. Here are the steps you should follow when building links:
1. Set your goal.
Link building takes time, but it is very effective and easy to do. Depending on the sites you ask and your approach, your results will vary. As a general rule you should set your linking goal much higher than the number of links you actually want to receive because most sites will not want to trade links, for various reasons.
2. Make sure your site is worth a link.
Your site must offer something of value to other sites. You need to create some additional linkable content. For example: how-to articles, product reviews, tools, tips and so on. Adding linkable content not only will encourage others to link to your site, but it will improve the overall quality of your site. Write about something you know that relates to your site. This Article is an example of teaching without trying to sell something. The best part of creating linkable content is that if you do it well, you will find that people will link to your site without you even asking, and that's the easiest way to build links. If you're not a writer you can add free tools or downloads instead. Consider creating a links page prior to requesting a link swap with a site. You can usually expect a better reception from a potential link partner if they can see where you will place the link to their site.
3. Determine the type of sites you want to swap links with.
You need to focus on sites that are related to your target market. If your site wants to sell sunglasses then you should approach sites that sell swimsuits and tanning lotions, but not sunglasses. Once you have swapped links from those sites, you need to developed a section of on eye protection and ask for links from all of the sites that address eye protection. You will eventually see a significantly increased number of links to your site from other sites in your target market. Plus, you should add additional pages of content to the site for visitors to enjoy and link to. This helps significantly in search-engine placements.
4. Get equipped to evaluate your link partners.
You don't want to spend too much time going after links from sites that the search engines don't think are valuable. While it isn't perfect, the Google Toolbar can help you decide which sites are quality link partners and which aren't. The toolbar integrates with your Web browser. It helps you by displaying the "page rank" of each site you visit. Put simply, page rank is a rough indicator of what Google thinks of a site. You can rest assured that if Google thinks it is a good site, it probably is. The higher a page ranks the better. One strategy is to try to link up with sites that have pages ranked as high as or higher than your own.
5. Locate quality link partners.
The easiest way to find quality link partners quickly is to start at Open Directory and Yahoo!. Open Directory and Yahoo! are good places to start for 3 reasons: They are both so difficult to get listed in; that each potential link partner is likely to be a higher quality partner than those you would find elsewhere. Yahoo! and Open Directory greatly boost a site's link popularity when they list a site. Your site will receive a small boost each time someone from one of those directories links to you. The links you build don't help your link popularity in the search engines unless the engines know about the link. Search engines "crawl" sites listed in Yahoo! and Open Directory on a regularly. By starting your link campaign here; you can be sure that search engines will quickly find you new links. To find partners, simply start searching for words that relat to the types of link partners you want (step 3). While browsing your potential partner's Web site, observe their page rank (step 4).
6. Organize your findings.
Use a spreadsheet to keep track of the following:
Full name of site owner or Webmaster.
E-mail address of the site owner or Webmaster.
Link partners Home page URL.
URL of the page where you think your link belongs.
Why you think it belongs there.
Rank of the page where you think your link belongs.
Something unique that you liked about the site.
Date of initial link request.
Much of this information will not be available, but try to find out as much as you can.
7. Prepare for contact.
You have a list of potential link partners. Now go through the list and send a custom e-mail to each one. You should request link swap. Do not send a generic e-mail requesting a link; it will not get a response. Your link request should mention the following, most of which comes from your spreadsheet (step 4): Something you liked about their site.
Why you think your link belongs on their site.
The URL to exactly where you think your link fits best on their site. The URL of where you'll be placing their link on your site. How you would like them to link to you. Provide a sample link and description. The easier you make it, the more likely they will post it.
8. Check for links.
When building links, dealing with people can take time. You may need to wait a month or longer before checking to see if anyone has linked to your site from your new partner. Usually it is best to do this step by hand, but you can use a link popularity tool if you have lots of links to check.
9. Follow up with the cream of the crop.
After a month has passed, follow up with each site that hasn't linked to you. Save time and only follow up with those with the highest page ranks.
10. Set a schedule.
You will find it easier if you put yourself onto a link-building schedule. Consider doing a certain small amount of link building daily. Do not try and complete the entire link campaign in a one massive effort.
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