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Link Building: To Link, or Not to Link, That is the Question
On
many webmaster forums, link building or link exchange's effectiveness
is a hot debate. Someone says it helps to build link popularity
and get more traffic, some says that it decreases your search
engine ranking. Why not read a professional's view? After
all, there are many wrong concepts presented in forums though
some of the ideas are very professional and true..
Lately, there have been a lot of heated discussions regarding
link building. Is it ethical to create a link building campaign?
Does Google or any other search engine penalize for link
farms? (a bunch of non-related links created for the SOLE
purpose of increasing search engine ratings)? Is the “link
building era? over?
Link Farms
Many webmasters claim that Google penalizes websites for
link farms. If this is so, why are a link farm sites that
have a page rank of 5 on their link farm page. Let me give
you an example, go to Google.com, type in any popular keyword(s)
and append the word links to it. For example, BCD Links.
Notice you’lwill get tones of websites that are linking to
unrelated sites, but still have a great PR. I do not encourage
link farming in any way or form, but building valuable partnerships
is something I do encourage.
If you own a jewelry site and you are exchanging links with
an antiques site, I think this is a great thing. It is very
possible that someone searching for jewelry may have an interest
in antiques. I own a few sites and the hits I receive from
partially related sites are phenomenal.
Most of my websites are targeted towards webmasters so I
receive hits from all sorts of sites. Remember, many webmasters
claim to know the truth regarding search engine algorithms,
but no one knows the EXACT TRUTH except the programmers at
the search engines.
Webmasters may have been penalized in the past for link farms
and doorway pages (pages created around certain keywords for
the sole purpose of redirecting surfers to the main page),
but who can say why some HAVEN'T been penalized.
Who Should I Create Link Partnerships With? 1. Create link
partnerships with sites related to your site.
2. Create link partnerships with sites that have an audience
that may be interested in your products
3. Exchange homepage links with websites that fit in your
genre.
You will receive a link on a page with a good ranking and you’ll
get quality, targeted hits.
How Do You Find Link Partners?
1. Signup with an automated links management provider that
organizes your links and helps find link partners. Automated
tools are the best because they help you save time. Uploading
and downloading your pages for every link exchange can be
a huge pain and very time consuming. Automated tools are NOT
link farms because they give you complete control of who you
exchange links with. If a member exchanges links with every
website, he/she might be abusing the tool. If a member uses
the tool responsibly, it can be very effective.
2. This is a great little exercise I would recommend to anyone.
a. Write down 20 search terms pertaining to your website
b. Go to http://www.google.com and type in a search term written
in step A
c. Contact as many websites as possible listed under that
search term and ask them to exchange inner page or homepage
links with you. If they're NOT interested, ask whether they
would be interested in selling advertising space. If your
website is fairly new, you may want to ask sites for advertising
prices. Free hits are the best hits but sometimes you might
have to go the extra lap and pay for service. I wouldn't recommend
spending over $100 / month for advertising UNLESS it's a high
traffic site with your site audience. The best deals are the
ones that offer $10-25 / month. There are sites out there
that will sell SUPER cheap advertising, and others that charge
an arm and a leg.
EVERYONE gets rejected sometime or another so keep your head
up
and keep moving along! The internet is comprised of Billions
of
websites. If you're rejected 500 times, you still have MANY
business opportunities left! This is a continuous job so set
aside time every week to do this. If you don’t have time for
this, then you don’t have time to make money.
3. Hire a link building firm (this can be quite expensive
but if
you have money, its minimal work for you)
PageRank
Pagerank is a great tool but don't use it as your ONLY measurement
for success. After all, it is only one of the search engine
ranking criteria and not the most decisive one.
Conclusion
In conclusion, link building is not only for increasing link
partners and search engine rankings, it’s also used to create
partnerships and establish profitable relationships with other
webmasters. Link building is a tedious process, but one of
the best for getting free (sometimes not), targeted hits from
other websites.
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Vik Tailor is the owner of http://www.linkexchanged.com.
He has been in the online advertising industry for over 4-5
years and has extensive online marketing knowledge.
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