The Fundamentals of Inbound Links - page 4

by Justine Curtis, 9/8/2007

Link Exchange Centres

Find and join free link exchange centres like LinkPartners.com. There you can find a categorised directory of websites that also want to exchange links. Be careful not to sign up with FFA (Free-For-All) sites because they are mostly email address gatherers and you can expect a sudden increase in email sp@m soon after you sign up. Also, only sign up with centres where you can approach other sites personally, and where they can approach you personally.

Controlling Your Links

When providing your link partners with the text to use in your inbound link, make sure it contains the key phrase you are targeting. Search engines will take into account the words that are included in the actual link as well at the text around it so include a brief paragraph about your business and if possible link your top key phrase to your URL. Make sure that each link points to the page you are promoting for that particular search term. This should improve your ranking in their listings.

Pointing all the links to your home page, with various target search terms, won't achieve the same as pointing targeted links at specific pages within the site.

How not to link

Under no circumstances join any link farms! Link farms, such as LinksToYou.com, sound simple and effective, but search engines, Google in particular, disapprove of them as blatant attempts to manipulate the rankings and they will penalise sites that use them. Once a site has been penalised, it is very difficult to get the penalty lifted, so avoid all link farms at all costs.

Search engine software engineers always look for spam tactics, when a software engineer discovers a link farm; all the domains in the link farm are banned. Result? Link popularity vanishes.

Summary

Acquiring links can be time-consuming and tedious. There are a number of ways to get them, some being easier than others. However you get them, inbound links are important for websites that want to move up the rankings. Inbound links, with the right link text, are essential for achieving top rankings when there is any competition for the search terms.

Link development's main advantage is dynamic, cumulative, and difficult to imitate. Many sites maintain search engine visibility and the resulting qualified traffic because of successful link development, not just based on the number of keywords on a page.

For top rankings, it is essential to take the time to get as many quality inbound links as possible. It should be treated as an ongoing task. Getting your first link is like getting your first sale. It is just as hard - and just as satisfying.

Linking strategies are just one of a wide range of subjects covered in our guide "Start at the Beginning". It covers all the basics of building and optimising your web site for both your customers and organic search engine rankings. For an excerpt and contents list visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

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Is your web site driving high quality, targeted customers to your business? Our proven Internet Marketing solutions make your web site work harder for you. For a complete range of Internet marketing and advertising resources to improve search engine positions visit Enable UK. Stop losing customers to your competitors and make more money from your web site TODAY. www.enable-uk.co.uk

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