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, “ABCD Links.” Notice you’ll 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’re a jewelry site and
you’re exchanging links with an antiques site, I think this is a great
thing. It’s 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’s to
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’ll
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. I can’t explain everything about pagerank but a good
explanation is given at http://www.google-watch.org/pagerank.html.
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.
Vik Tailor is the owner of
http://www.linkexchanged.com and
http://www.buyadvertisingonline.com. He
has been in the online advertising industry for over 4-5 years and has
extensive online marketing knowledge.
Article Source:
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