LINK POPULARITY SERVICE

Summary:

Link Building remains one of the most critical aspects of SEO. Even after the Web 2.0, which includes social media, blogging, Google Instant Search etc., link building has held its important presence throughout the online marketing industry. Getting authority links to your site, really helps in improving your page rank and search engine results placements. Link building is a complicated task that requires determination, patience, and practice. There are a lot of things that you need to keep in mind when you set out to achieve effective link building. However, there are no solutions that will work overnight. So, in your haste for results, do not commit these link building errors -



1. Link Buying - This is a serious no-no. Google and other search engines do not appreciate this. They want quality links, that is why, purchasing links, if detected by the search engines can even lead to your site being penalised. As Matt Cutts of Google has been quoted as saying quite clearly, “If there is no discretion involved with the sites offering the links (meaning anyone can get listed if they pay/submit) then Google immediately devalues the backlink.” You get it now, there is no purpose achieved in buying links. The same goes for Directories too, infact Google has removed the ‘Directory Submission’ tip from its SEO guidelines too. You must understand that putting up your link on a website that has hundreds of similar one-way links, may not have any effect what-so-ever on your page rank. Search engines give such sites or links a ‘no-follow’ attribute, which renders the entire link building campaign useless.

2. Link Exchange Is Not What It Seems - Remember this- search engines prefer one way links only. The exchange is not preferred by them that is why this link building practice must also be discouraged. The search enignes’ principle is quite simple- exchanging links on a regular basis is not in their good books, and that is something which may hamper your reputation with them. Google just updated their algorithm to locate those who are doing link exchange, and even penalised them, so avoid link exchange.

There is another thing that may not work in your favour here. If you exchange links with sites having themes or subjects which are not relevant to your own website or business, then the search engines will not consider them as quality links. Links from relevant sites are essential for link building goals to be achieved to the fullest. Getting good links from authority sites is recommended- sites like .ORG or .NET and .EDU have a greater impact on rankings and SEO objectives than ordinary. For instance, if you are a mobile website, then getting a link from a mobile network forum is a good idea.

3. Engaging In Mass Linking - To achieve back linking, do not spread yourself everywhere on the internet, and give your links to third class websites which may not be even indexed by Google. The latest Google algorithm can easily locate the mass backlinkers and can also penalise your website. Understand this that, when other sites link to you, the algorithms of the search engines work on computing the credibility of those other sites. The higher the credibility of these sites, the higher your page rank. The bottomline here is to obtain less number of good links rather than trying to acquire as many links as you can. So that the traffic is directed to your site from high quality and relevant sites. This will lead to better conversions too, as the traffic will be better.

There is one more thing you should avoid here- spamming. Do not post your links on sites, where they are not relevant or welcome. This is specially to be kept in mind when you are doing blog or forum commenting. You come across as a spammer, and lose your credibility. Do not clutter other’s comment area by your link. Link building is a slow process which gives great results with time.

4. Forgetting to Use Keywords In Anchor Texts - You must never forget to use keywords in your anchor texts. This ensures that search engines understand that the content being provided is valuable/relevant and also describes for them, what the link content is all about. For instance, if your website is about tea flavours, then you must hyperlink keywords like tea, tea flavours, tea variety. This will make the link relevant and preferred by the search engines, also, it will increase your credibility. Remember that creating links to your desired anchor text helps in building backlinks for the desired keywords/phrases. Forgetting to use keywords in anchor texts is like letting go sure opportunity, for improving the credibility of your link.

5. Ignoring Social Media - This is one link building error that can mar your entire effort. Google is now giving great importance to social media. Its search algorithm now adds links from social networking websites. These search engines have high value for the links that result from social media. Why? Because these sites are where real people interact and share information. Google focuses on getting results relevant to people, and if a large number of people on a social network are linking back to you, then you gain credibility on your site. Facebook and Twitter are the sites which, when send links to you, you will get higher rankings in search engines. Again, your link has to be relevant for the people on these platforms.

To Conclude: Remember that link building is a time consuming process. The search engines have become smarter, what with their Panda updates and all. So you have to remember on thing- get quality links from relevant websites. That’s it.

If you have experienced anymore goof ups regarding link building, do share them.

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Organic links are the links added by webmasters to the sites which they consider useful for their visitors. This essentially means that only the links that hold ample relevance to the context find a place on the site in organic linking.

As organic links are relevant to the site they are on, there are more possibilities of the people clicking on these links as they visit the site. People who are on the site for a particular product, service or information may be interested in something that is closely associated with it. This is the basic principle underlying all organic link building. This is the reason sites with organic links always perform better when it comes to conversion rates.

So what is the best way for a website that is in the beginning stages of its establishment to attract organic links? Firstly, links should not be seen as the basic aim of a website vying for web presence in the long run. An overemphasis on linking would only result in higher rank for a short while, but as soon as the efforts for aggressive linking whine away the ranks regress. Instead, a website should set branding as its eventual aim and try to establish a strong web presence for itself in the long term. There are many trenchant ways that lead the way to better branding. You must concentrate on building quality content and services. Links would follow naturally.

One way to go about it is to write and distribute quality press releases that give up-to-date and relevant news about your business or sector. Mark your presence by posting comments on sites relevant to your own, that you have built a relationship with overtime. Use social networking for establishing yourself as a brand. These methods would help you get plenty of organic links.

Social networking in particular is quite effective in building brands if used strategically. By creating your branded profiles over different social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, you can tap the potential of these popular social networks. The point lies in making more connections which will result in natural links for the website.

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What should be the optimal frequency for link building?

That is the question which often harasses the new webmasters. Lacking subtle experience in search optimization, they just don’t know how many links they should arrange for their dear websites every day or week. They are often a bit confused regarding the speed of their link building, wondering whether it is too slow or unnecessarily fast.

Frequency of link building including directory submission depends on several factors such as domain age, its activeness, pagerank, and the quality and value of backlinks to the domain currently indexed by the search engines.

If your site is brand new, acquire inbound links slowly. First of all, get some backlinks from directories. Thereafter go for other options such as article marketing, press releases, contacting bloggers and webmasters, and utilizing social media. Go slow in the initial months and once your site has been properly indexed, you can add pace to your link building campaign.

Link building is a slow process, so expect a slow, regular growth. Instead of focusing on link building speed, take care to ensure you get links from quality websites. Search engines respect links from authority sites, so if you are able to get links from these kind of sites, it would give a major boost to your search engine rankings. However, you will have to build a quality site for this purpose, for any established site would not provide link to a sub-standard one. In your link building enthusiasm, never seek links from link farms and over-the-night sites. It would actually harm your prospects.

Aim to get yourself listed in the top directories of your sector. Getting listed in geographical directories is also a good idea because such directories provide cross referencing. Also ensure a few social media and wiki links in the process. But never try to do the things fast. Take your own pace, concentrating on quality content and back links. As your site ages, it would gain links naturally.

If the domain has been active for a while, you can push the pace button from the start. But even when you are out gathering links for an ‘aged’ domain, avoid sites with negative image. These would hurt you no matter how old your domain is. Gather links from all niches of link building such as articles, social media, press releases, blogs etc. A well diversified link profile would help your site in the long run.

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Link Building is an effort to build your site’s reputation on the web. Consider your website a valuable asset for your business, and link building a business-building endeavor. However, don’t expect link building to gratify you instantly. It is like a plant which you have to nurture to let it grow as a tree and bear fruits. And like every good gardener, you must also be aware of the Do’s and Don’t of link building.

Link Building can be done using various methods such as Direct Contacts, Articles, Press Releases, Blogging, Social Media and Online Video.

Directory Submission

Do: Submit your website link to popular web directories requesting them to include your link in the relevant section. There are a plethora of directories out there on web. So choose quality, relevant and popular directories to get your links.

Don’t: Don’t waste your time trying to get link from sub-standard directories which are there just to mint money. Links from such directories would neither get you visitors nor any link value.

Articles Marketing
Do: Submit well-written articles written by experts on relevant topics in your industry. Try to get quality articles written on subjects which are really useful.

Don’t: Hire someone to write hundreds of useless articles for you and then dump these into the article directories thinking that these would help you generate some valuable clicks or link value.

Press Releases
Do: Do press releases on newsworthy topics related to your company and its business. Announce the releases to your community through industry trusted PR distribution resources. Use embedded links in the PR to take the users to the related pages on your website.

Don’t: Don’t jump with a press release every week announcing useless information which would never be read by anyone. If other websites never republish the information in your press release spreading the links in the process, there is no point in the exercise.

Direct Contact
Do: Contact the webmasters of relevant sites asking them for a link. Try to get links from established high authority websites. This would help you to carve a niche in your field.

Don’t: Don’t run contacting all and sundry imploring for links. Irrelevant or low standard links will be of little or no value. Links from sub-standard sites could even hurt your rankings.

Social Media
Do: Put in time to build your community. Ask questions and engage your audience by providing useful knowledge and information. Links in a social media platform with a strong community would boost your business.

Don’t: Don’t make a Twitter and Facebook account and begin promoting business recklessly. If you haven’t built a community and strengthen your online relations, an array of links on your account will not help you a bit.

Blogs
Do: Find relevant bloggers and make them aware of your website. While you can always contact them directly, you could use other methods too like posting on places where they know about your site naturally. If they really find it useful, they can put a link to it in their blog post.

Don’t: Avoid wasting your time putting links in the comments area of the blogs which have least chance of getting any visitor.

Forum Sections
Do: When you visit relevant sites, check if they have forums. If you find one, participate in discussion constructively and put your URL in your signature. Remember that only a meaningful comment can get the users click on the link.

Don’t: Your link is useless without any substantial information preceding it. So just don’t go around putting your links without spending some time to understand the context of discussion.

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As the search engines evolved, they found out that by weighing the anchor text, I mean the keywords and phrases used for giving the link, they could have a better idea if the pages were relevant to particular subjects. This made the anchor text an important part of the ranking equation. A carefully done anchor text could overshadow other ranking factors.

The most important thing when creating the anchor text is the insertion of right keywords. An anchor text with proper keywords pointing to a specific website will always carry weight in terms of search engine rankings. However, if you use the same anchor text in a large number of directory and article submissions, you could actually hurt your SEO attempts. So it would be useful to make minor changes in the anchor text after a while. An example would help you understand this better. Suppose you optimize your site with the anchor text ‘internet marketing tips’. When you have substantial backlinks with this text, you could change it to ‘online marketing advice’ or ‘tips on internet marketing’.

If you run a business at the local level, you can use the anchor text to effectively promote yourselves. Again, an example would take home the point in the better way. Suppose you run a furniture shop in Paris. In this case you can use anchor texts such as ‘Paris furniture shop’ or ‘furniture shop in Paris’. You could shift to anchor texts such as ‘buy furniture in Paris’. However, you must use the name of the place in the anchor text. Doing it any other way would beat the purpose of the anchor text.

These examples illustrate that you can leverage the hyperlinking of important keyword phrases instead of hyperlinking unrelated text. If keywords don’t fit in anchor text, it is always a great idea to restructure sentences. Your keyword phrases should fit in a sentence naturally. The ides is to ensure that the content is search-engine friendly, and, at the same time, useful for the actual users too.

You can use anchor text effectively in internal linking too. When linking pages of a web site to one another, you can use the anchor text in the text, navigation and ‘Alt’ tag of the images. A well thought out anchor text used effectively in internal as well as external linking would help your site rank high in the search engines.

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Link exchange is one of the popular strategies to promote your website and achieve good search engine ranking. If you are having a website, you must be aware of the fact that proper linking plays a key role to drive traffic to your site and make it popular among the users in the world. Getting quality links is not an easy task, you need to follow some suggested steps.

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As per the SEO experts, linking your website to non-related websites have negative impact on your website as it will not help you gain good rankings in search engines. Thus, it will be a sheer wastage of efforts and valuable time. To put it simply, if your site has too many irrelevant links, it will have negative effect on the SERPs . Hence, be careful while getting links for your website. Find out relevant and quality links instead of packing your site with non-related links.

For making your site available for other related sites to make it more popular, you need to link your site to the websites that have relevant content irrespective of its PR. Today, there are so many softwares that help in managing ‘linking programs.’ They provide links from anyone, but you will be surprised to know that these programs have been the least successful in terms of gaining SE ranking for the websites as they collect so many irrelevant links. So, they have been a burden for your website instead of being resources to improve your site’s ranking.

Hence, one should understand the fact that quality links are important for gaining good search engine ranking. Non- related links will pass your PR ( page rank), but they will have little effect or no effect on the SERPs.

Now, it is almost clear that anyone linking for the purpose of achieving high search engine rankings, needs to get proper links if he or she wants to improve the ranking of his or her website. So, do not stock your website or webpages with improper links.

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