As an SEO, or search marketing expert, link building is one of the most essential tasks that you undertake. Getting high quality one way links to your site from related and authority sites is a challenge that you accept when you get down to link building for your site. All these efforts are in addition to the links you get from social mentions on networks like Facebook, Twitter etc.

Links Only Matter If They Are Authority Links:
You have to make a note of this fact that post the algorithmic updates of search engines, what matter are high quality links from authority sites. Links from low quality, irrelevant sites are worthless, and get you no link juice. That is why you must always aim to get links from authority sites.

How To Judge The Worth Of A Link:
This is a question that needs addressing so that you do not get penalized by the engines for associating with low quality link farms. There are multiple factors that let you assess and evaluate the value of a link. Apart from the link, you need to take into consideration the quality of the web page and the website as a whole. You have to judge the link profile of the site you are linking to.

Link Evaluation

The Link Evaluation Checklist:
There are many link value metrics that you can use daily to know whether your links are worthwhile or not. These metrics work at the site level, page level and also at link levels.

Site level checklist:

• Has the site been indexed by Google. Do a Google search like- “site:example.com”. If there are no results, then you must back off.
• Find out the PageRank of the site, and also whether it has one or not. This will tell you whether it is new, or banned, or whatever. You can use mozRank by SEOmoz to determine a site’s value.
• Figure out if the site is relevant to yours. If you are about back pain remedy, and it is about plumbing, then you are poles apart! So make sure the site is relevant.
• Does the site in question have the same language as yours. And also does it link to the same language sites.
• Make sure that the site is run by real people and not an automated aggregator. For a good quality site, it has to be more manually maintained and run. Also ensure that it is regularly updated too.
• Stay miles away from unauthorized medicine, porn or gambling sites.

Page level checklist:

• Search Google with “site:” operator again. The page must be indexed with Google to go ahead. Also make sure that the page has been cached by Google. You can find the same by searching- “cache:” operator.
• Make sure that the page has a decent number of outgoing links. They should be few and not too many, making it a link farm of sorts. No out going links on the page should be avoided.
• Measure the page rank, and also ensure that the topic of the page matches to your resource. Relevancy is the key here.
• Make sure there are no hidden or low quality links on the page. Avoid pages with multiple footer links with highly optimized anchor texts.
• Check on the content. Make sure it is unique and not plagiarized.
• Do not opt for pages with broken links or expired links. They will be useless for your purpose.

Link level Checklist:

• Choose text links over image links.
• Ensure that the anchor text of the link is natural.
• Make sure that the actual link on the page must be on the top and in the editorial part.
• Verify whether the link is an actual link with a href in it or a JavaScript link. Check the JavaScript link for its code.
• Check on the font size of the link and its CSS declarations
• Try to find out whether the link has a rel=nofollow attribute added to it. This attribute makes the link useless for Google.

Link Evaluation Tools:
Here are some tools that will help you analyze links more thoroughly. They are:

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Blekko
• Screaming SEO Spider
• Cognitive SEO tools

If you looking for quality links on the above mentioned guidelines, checkout our one way link packages.

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Summary:

Article Submission is without doubt really essential in building a good online business and promoting your services and products. You can get huge and targeted traffic to your site from a well written and researched article. However, the next step, after writing the article is highly critical- you must submit your articles to the right websites, in the right way. Below are some guidelines, that when followed will lead to high quality back links, and better search engine placements. Apart from that, you will also create a reputation for yourself as an expert in your niche/ business area.

1. Write informative and knowledgeable articles - Google’s Panda update fell hard on some article websites- mainly because of their low quality content. That is why there is a much greater emphasis on high quality of articles and write ups. So make sure that what ever you write, it is informative, well researched and highly relevant to your niche. If you are putting yourself across as an expert, then you must sound like one. If the article isn’t factual as well as entertaining, people won’t finish it. You have to be very impressive right from the start as you have only a few seconds to make people ‘not click’ the close button. The more valuable the content within your articles, the better will be their performance in the article directories. Think of issues that are relevant to your target, and then pen down what you think will justify the topic completely.
2. Do not submit to multiple sites mindlessly - Yes, the main purpose of article marketing is getting as many back links as possible- in order to get higher search engine positioning. But if you send your articles to millions of directories, it may be noticed by the search engines, and you may be penalized for getting links from poor and irrelevant sites. Search engines prefer good quality links and that from reputed and relevant sites. Massive links from low quality sites, will push you further down in search engines ranking.
3. Most preferably do manual submissions to chosen sites - Article submission to multiple sites can be challenging, as well as tedious. There are many automatic submission software available, but they are not recommended. When you submit your articles manually, you have a better chance of getting them submitted and listed. This is because many submission sites require you to enter login details, which is a requirement that can be missed by the software tool. Furthermore, not all directories follow a single pattern of rules, that is why one tool may be good for submission on one site, and unfit for the other one. Like in the case, some articles directories allow HTML after the article, while few allow in body as well. In some cases, you are allowed only few tags by the directories. So, the basis is this- do submissions manually, and it should not be difficult if you have a list of select directories. You must determine which article directories are showing up in Google search, and make sure to send your articles here only.
4. Read and follow the article sites’ terms and requirements - If a site is hosting your article, give a few minutes to reading its term of services before making your submission. This will aid you only as your article will not be removed due to non compliance with some terms. Mostly, some article sites will not allow you to have links of your affiliates in your articles. When you follow their terms of service, your article has a much higher chance of being accepted.



5. Spin your articles - Do not submit the same one everywhere. Firstly, it creates a duplicate content problem. This could lead to Google penalizing you. Secondly, it is really bad for your reputation as an expert. If people search for your niche, come across the same article by you everywhere, and nothing much else, you do not establish your self as an expert for the users. So it is important to create different versions of your copy, and then submit it to different sites, so that at least it would not come across as the same piece.
6. Use keyword variations in anchor text, while submitting to various sites - In order to make your backlink pattern look real, make sure that you submit to a select number of article directories, and always use some keyword variation for the anchor text of your backlinks. Following this practice will not attract the search engines’ attention towards you! Do not let high keyword density get your article rejected. Make sure that your keyword density is no more than 2% of your article word count.

To Conclude: You must make sure that your articles have the option of being shared on various social networks. This will speed up its spread all over the web. Be informative, and choosy in where you submit, and you can get high benefits.

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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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In online marketing, the visibility and popularity of your website on the web is crucial. It determines the amount of traffic and back links or inbound links that your site receives, which eventually gets converted into sales. Online businesses make it a priority that their site’s ranking on search engines are always high, which means their websites or businesses are popular, resulting in attracting more visitors and getting more back links. Therefore, websites employ various methods to optimize their site, these include exchanging links, three way linking, blogging, article submission and more.

These practices work in different ways but their goal is to help drive traffic back to your website. For example, let us take the case of how articles contribute in optimizing your site. Article submission is an SEO strategy also known as an off page optimization (usually done by SEO service providers), in which you write articles, inserting keywords or popular query terms, that offer information to the readers and search engine crawlers, then finally draw them to your site. This way your website is also credited for adding new content to the world wide web, helping it thrive in the long run.

However, while submitting articles, you require some strategies to spruce up your articles and ensure the maximum traffic drive. This is where SEO service providers come in. They are equipped with the knowledge and skills of improving your articles that will make search engines crawl and rank your site in the best way. Here are some ways in which you can maximize the efficiency of your articles that are to be crawled by search engines:

• By including the keyword in the article – Keywords are what search engines look for when you run a search. You can insert the keywords somewhere in the article and also in the title. If your title has the keyword, it catches the attention of the crawler and the reader both, even before reading the article. It is also good to place your keywords in proper intervals throughout the article.
• By optimizing the sub headers and tags – This will allow you to use the keywords more, apart from the articles themselves, helping you avoid their repetition which affects the flow of the article. Tags help people in finding what they are searching for, therefore, using the keywords in them will increase the traffic.
• Analyze the written articles – You may first write the articles in your own way so that they carry your own originality and creativity. After completing them, you can analyze them and find the places where you can aptly insert the keywords.
• Polish the articles – Instead of finalizing your articles for submission right after you complete them, you may take some time, maybe even a day or two. Later when you go through them again, you are most likely to have a new idea that you can incorporate or replace one with a better one.
• Go for popular sites – Just like your site, article directories and sites are also ranked. Better ranking directories obviously have better reputation and importance for the search engine crawlers. So, by submitting your articles on such directories and sites, you can expect that your site too gets a better indexing and traffic.

Some practices to be avoided:

• Do not stuff keywords – Their should be balance in how you place your keywords in your articles. Over using them will result in stuffing, which disrupts the flow of your articles, affecting their ranking. Instead of repeating the keywords over and over again, you can use synonyms and avoid redundancy and improve the quality of your articles. Readers should also find your articles interesting, informative and easy to comprehend.
• Do not finalize the articles without analyzing and reworking them – Unless you are confident enough that the flow is smooth, the keywords balanced and all the necessary information or data are included, it is not recommended that you submit them.
• Do not over optimize – It could land your site up in the search engines sand box. Not all articles will require major optimization. Some will do the job efficiently with a few touch.

Applying the above mentioned tips will make a lot of difference in the efficiency of your articles in optimizing your site. You actually contribute content to the world wide web and also do not wait for other webmasters to grant your request for back links. Your site’s credibility is also increased among both search engines and the readers. Article submission is an ethical and cost effective SEO practice and is adopted by SEO service providers widely. You can outsource your online marketing activities to an expert SEO service provider who can handle the job of drawing more traffic to your site while you focus on your core business activities.

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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 makes link building worth all the effort? Your website is one of the millions of websites that is trying to get its space in the complex Internet scenario. Getting your site noticed is not an easy affair. Most of the popular search engines like Google have developed sophisticated programs to crawl and rank the millions of websites listed on the Internet.

Providing back links remains one of the best and the most reliable white hat SEO technique to drive maximum traffic to the website. Many webmasters, particularly newbies, are confused whether to go for reciprocal links or one way links.

My take on the matter is – go for right mix of one way or reciprocating links.

Well. Let me explain it.

Reciprocating links pose no problem as long as you link to good quality and authoritative sites. Suppose a high authority deems you worthy enough to give you a link and you then link back, there is no harm. But never use low quality reciprocal linking. The rule of thumb is never use reciprocal links as a ranking improvement strategy but don’t worry about reciprocating links with real trusted sites.

Now about one way links, which are the truly efficacious method for increasing the ranking of the site. Search engines consider links as the votes for a site. Put simply, they consider the sites with more links more popular.

You need links for 1) Achieving higher search engine position by increase in website link popularity 2)  Driving traffic related to your industry, and 3) Branding of your product and business.

So it becomes mandatory for you, if you are serious with your online business, to built an effective link building strategy. When you build links pointing to your website, you substantially increase the possibility of getting quality traffic. By quality traffic I mean the people who have the same type of business, or are interested in buying your products and services. This boosts the chances of sales as well as helps you in brand building.

With colossal link building process, you can also get the search engine crawlers to give you high ranking. In the competitive scenario of today, the process of link building has become quite a professional one. There are several reputed link building companies out there, which can provide you effective link building services for a fee. However, if you choose a seasoned link builder for yourself, the investment would return manifold.

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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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When you want to search for any topic on the Internet, you use search engines to find the appropriate results by writing some relevant keywords. This is how the websites get ranking and they succeed in boosting their ranks on the web. Article marketing is a way to market your business through different articles. These are written specifically in a way which provides essential information related to the products available in the company and provides a link so that the user can visit the site to know more about the products and services. These help in increasing traffic to the site and also increase the link density and search engine placement.

The articles written by the particular company are for entirely promotional purposes and are deposited to the article directories so that they can get the maximum out links. Every article has one or two links that straight away goes to the website. These are found generally at the end of the article by adding the source of the article, adding a paragraph and also by adding a biography of the author of the article who has written the article. This is a means which gives creditability to the information provided and also works as a tool for publicity. It also attracts many users to visit the site which has been linked with the article to know more about the services offered by the site.

The writer who is about to write an article must assure that he knows the basics which are essential to keep in mind while writing an article. The first and foremost requirement is to develop and identify the relevant keyword which will help in finding the article from search engines. The writer must use title and Meta tags which will help in easily navigation to find the information required by the user. Then the writer must confirm to contact businesses which have online niche newsletters. They should have higher page ranks; this will help in getting higher ranks. It is also important to ensure that the writer must use reasonable number of keywords which means he should know the number which can be used in a particular article. If the article is stuffed with keywords, it will not help the article to get higher ranks but it will be kicked out from the search engine results.

Once the writer is aware about the writing techniques, he has to ensure that he writes on those topics which the user wants to know or may search for in the near future. There is a general phenomenon that the more the number of articles, the more the company will get promotion. This will result into getting more clicks by the user which will ultimately help in raising the search engine placement. The purpose of article marketing will be successful only when the company will start getting the desired traffic and will be able to grab more and more attention towards the site.

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