Simple Link Building Methods.

Link Building Methods Linking brings qualified prospects to your website, boosts search engine rankings, establishes value and trust in your brand, gives you a competitive advantage and establishes you in the virtual marketplace.

A couple of years ago Link Exchange was quite new and an excellent place for savvy webmasters to exchange quality links with those who were like-minded. Many Link Exchanges, mostly based on the original few, have sprung up promising an unending stream of reciprocal links with as many sites as you dare dream. There's no problem with this however, link trades, where you put my link on your site and I put your link on my site may be less valuable than a one-way link these days after the Jagger Update.

For Instance getting Inbound links to your site (IBL) has become more important to achieve high rankings in Google than it originally was. You can build and establish one way links from blogs, news sites, directories, ezines, product reviewers, partner sites and so on.

Link from non commercial sites - Links from .edu and .org websites are good for increasing your site's rankings and are more important than ever.

Article Links - Links from the author by-line or within the article that point back to your site will positively affect your rankings.

Link from established sites - If your site is referred from big behemoth site like Wikipedia, Yahoo, AOL, Ebay, Amazon, etc., you will rank better than you did before Jagger.

Avoid Link Farms - Link farms are sites that exist solely to link to other web sites. Google in particular has been known to ban sites found using a link farm, stay away from them.

Relevant Links - IBL (inbound links) and OBL (outbound links) relevancy is more important after Jagger. This means that if you point to related sites or you get links from other sites that are related to your website, you may rank better after Jagger.

Use Link Bait - Although the term "link bait" is fairly new, the entire concept of link bait has been around as long as the internet itself. People have been creating controversial, funny, and informative web sites and web site content that others naturally link to.

Post messages on forums - Post messages on related forums , make sure they are readable by seach engine, while some of them have no-index attribute on their page.

Social Sites - Some free host sites also allow you to create pages on their sites which may help leverage the authority of their domains.

Obtain Links from Media Sites - Media sites have large audiences of people looking for information - get coverage and a link to your site. This would not only get a significant spike in traffic to our site but also get a percentage of that audience linking to us because the media site did. Links attract links.

Publish Press Releases - Publish any new event or newly introduced service/product in press releases directories.

Submit Tips - Post quality tips on other web sites in the area of expertise, at the bottom of each tip, include two lines about your products/services, and a link to your website.

Submit Reviews - Review different products or services and post about our good/bad experience with the product, service or company on other sites. eg. 'review', 'price comparison' etc. At the bottom of the review, include a few lines of text about you with a link to your website.

Publish whitepapers - Throughout the whitepaper, include references to our products or services with a link to your website. In addition, make sure you let our readers know they may freely distribute the document. Place a link to your whitepaper on our website to enable our visitors to download it. Submit whitepaper on other sites.

Publish Ebooks - Throughout the e-book, include references to your products or services with a link to your website. In addition, make sure you let your readers know they may freely distribute the ebook. Place a link to your ebook on your website to enable your visitors to download it. Submit ebooks on other sites.

Profile Pages - MSN's Small Business Directory allows you to create a company profile page and get listed in other profile pages.

Good inbound links can always move your page up the ranking ladder and act as new entry points to your site. The best way to carry link building is by obtaining natural links pointing to your site from a variety of related websites, some .org's and .edu's, and from other trusted authority sites. Always remember what the original purpose for linking was and why it was practiced and why incoming links were, and still are, valued by the Search Engines. A link from a related site is a 'vote of confidence' that they feel their visitors will benefit from your content and hence, evidence that your website is considered to be of value in a specific category. Link popularity is important and link building process needs to be given high priority. A little time spent on Link building today will ensure a good search engine ranking for your site in the future.

About the author: S Prema is Search Engine Optimisation Executive for UK-based internet marketing company, Star Internet Ltd. Cients of Star Internet benefit from a range of services designed to maximise ROI from internet marketing activities. To find out more, visit http://www.affordable-seo.co.uk

Your Landing Page!

Hi All,

We all have landing or "sales" pages. A lot of us spend a great deal
of time creating the BEST possible, one that will immediately cause
visitors to purchase your product or service. However sometimes
THAT is not the case.

The other day I came across this great article that just may help:

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Landing Page Usability: More Than Just The Curiosity Factor.
By Frederick Townes (c) 2006

A landing page is the page that visitors first see after
becoming curious enough to click on a link to your site. The
link may be found on search engine results pages, within a
specifically-targeted email, on the site's navigation toolbar
or within another website.

In many cases, these are links you pay for. The organic results
delivered by SERPs are free, but, unless your site appears on
the first two pages, it's unlikely that visitors will connect.

In many cases, the landing page is the site's home page - but
not always, even within SERPs. Landing pages can appear anywhere
within a web site.

Paid Links Demand ROI

If your landing page receives prominent display within search
engine results pages, congratulations. Upward of 50% of visitor
traffic found that landing page through an SE query. However,
only 20 to 25 sites can appear on page one of Google's SERPs.
What about the other 10,000 links Google delivers to its users?



Often, smaller sites employ paid links to drive site traffic.
Google Adwords, for example, is a PPC (pay per click) means of
building business. The important point is this: PPC programs
have to more than pay for themselves in order for your site to
remain a viable business.

Any form of paid linkage to one of your landing pages must
deliver a nice ROI. And to do that, you need a fully-usable,
engaging landing page. Otherwise, visitors won't stick around
long enough to read about your low prices and free shipping.

The Purpose of the Landing Page

While all site pages have a purpose (at least on well-designed
sites) a landing page typically has a special or singular
purpose: to sell a particular item, to announce a product sale,
to entice visitors to opt in, complete a questionnaire or
perform some other MDA (most desired action).

First determine the MDA the landing page addresses. Then, design
everything - from headlines and text to graphics and pictures -
to support the completion of the MDA.

Try to keep to one MDA per landing page. Again, the landing page
has a specific purpose. Extraneous information, slow-loading
videos and a confusing call to action are distractions, along
with affiliate links, text links and unnecessary animations. All
distract the attention of the viewer from your MDA.

Landing Page Design Principles

1. Create a headline that accomplishes the following:

- tells the visitors that they're on the right page;
- clearly states the purpose of the landing page - the MDA;
- engages the visitor, piques interest, encourages the reader
to continue.

The headline should be a grabber and appear "above the fold" -
the top of your home page. That's the most valuable real estate
on your site.

2. Use short blocks of text and single sentences surrounded by
negative space (white). Visitors tend to scan rather than read
the entire page, even if the text is pure poetry.

3. And because readers scan instead of read site text, use lots
of headers, sub-heads and bullet lists.

4. The first sentence of each block of text should provide the
critical information you want to impart, again because visitors
scan, often reading just the first sentence of a paragraph or
block of text.

5. Employ an unambiguous call to action. "Order Now!" "Call now
before you forget!" Leave no doubt what action is expected of
the visitor. Calls for action can appear throughout the landing
page text and a call to action should be the last thing visitors
read.

6. Choose a type font that's easy on the eyes. Avoid script fonts
and fonts with lots of curly-Qs.

7. If the landing page sells one or more products, provide
visitors with pictures of the products.

8. Prices, including shipping and handling costs, should appear
below the fold. But they should definitely appear.

Creating a Prominent Landing Page

If your landing page is also the home page, by definition
it has prominence to visitors and to search engine spiders.
However, if your landing page or pages are within the site,
it's important to make sure search engine spiders recognize
the importance of this page within the site - its prominence.

Spiders use a number of criteria to determine a particular
page's prominence within the context of the entire site.
Location is one criterion - the more clicks away from the home
page, the less prominent - at least to the limited capabilities
of current search engines.

Text is another criterion used to assess prominence. Keywords,
keyword density and an automated comparison of keywords in the
text against keywords in various HTML tags is another indicator
of a page's prominence.

Finally, the number of links pointing to a particular page is
an important factor in assessing page prominence. The more links
connecting other pages to your landing page, the more prominent
it will be to search engines when your site is indexed.

This is especially important when landing page product offerings
differ significantly from other products sold on the site. Search
engines employ a mathematical taxonomy to classify each site
within a particular category. So, if you market educational toys
but introduce a landing page offering children's books, it's
important for search engines to reevaluate the site's taxonomy
and to expand the site's classification to include 'sellers of
children's books'. One way to do this is to create links within
the site all pointing to the landing page.

Landing pages are useful as motivators, as site directories,
information sources and for many other valuable purposes.
However, the development of an effective landing page takes
careful thought and an understanding of what drives both
humans and search engine spiders.

Generate increased site traffic and improve your conversion
rate with a well-designed, well-written, well-placed and
well-connected landing page on your site.

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Frederick Townes is the owner of W3 EDGE Web Design.
W3 EDGE specializes in custom business web design and development, providing bleeding edge solutions to fit needs from small static sites to large dynamic sites requiring a fully customized CMS system. Contact them today to find out how W3 EDGE can help you make the most of your online
presence.
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