Nowadays if we want a website to be successful, we have to deal with niche markets, great content, search engine optimization and tremendous competition. And this list is simply the starting point. We will quite possibly need to acquaint ourselves with marketing and copywriting and converting our visitors into buyers. However, for just about every webmaster, the big difficulty is bringing in traffic.

That leads us to the topic of this article. How can I attract Internet surfers to my site? One answer to this question is backlinks! So, exactly what are backlinks and just what do backlinks have to do with attracting visitors to my site?

The first thing to understand is that there are two basic forms of traffic, paid traffic and organic traffic. Examples of paid traffic are such things as advertising through pay per click networks, placing banners on other sites and any other way in which you are able to pay to attract a surfer’s attention and tempt him to visit your site. If you’re only focusing on paid traffic then you don’t need to pay much attention to backlinks.

Organic traffic is traffic that comes from someone searching on one of the search engines for a topic which they are interested in. Then when all the free listings come up the surfer clicks on a link to visit a webpage. In the case of organic traffic the webmaster does not have to pay directly for the link which the visitor clicks on.

In general, organic traffic is simply called free traffic. Despite the fact that it can be, it usually is not really free. To get a website page included on the first couple of pages of results the webmaster will have to put in quite a lot of work. This brings us back to the topic of backlinks.

Generally, the quality and number of backlinks attached to a site are what determines sites which appear when we do a search. A backlink is nothing more than a hyperlink from one site to another. So it is very helpful if you have a whole lot of websites linking to your site if you want to be ranked highly in the organic search engine results.

But remember that quality matters too. A backlink will be seen as offering high quality if:

* The words used to create the hyperlink (called the ‘anchor’ text) are highly relevant to the topic of the page which the link is leading to. (You should not use “click here”!)

* The topic on the site where the backlink originates is relevant to the topic on your site.

* The site linking to you has plenty of good quality backlinks pointing to it.

* The page rank of the site linking to you is relatively high (ideally a PR3 or more) and the higher the better.

Of course there are other criteria, but the criteria given here are a very good starting point.

So, just how does a webmaster go about building up the necessary quantity of high quality backlinks pointing to his site? There are many ways of doing this and an even greater number of software programs which are designed to assist in providing the answer. Purchasing the software increases the cost of your backlinks.

The truly free way is to simply wait for other webmasters to discover your site and think enugh of it to link to it. That is super, but can take quite a long time. Of course you can contact other webmasters and ask if they will trade links with you. You simply give them a link from your site and they give you one from their site in return. These are however called reciprocal links and are generally thought to be of uncertain value these days.

Another way is to make use of Article Marketing which initially means writing articles about subjects that are relevant to your site. You then submit your articles to several article directory sites and include links of your choice in the resources box following your content. Submitting your website to a number of site directories is another method that fits into the category of free links.

You might also opt to pay for backlinks. One of the simplest methods is to buy a link directly. Internet marketing discussion boards are a very good place to find links on offer. You could pay $50 a month or more to get a link from a PR5 site. You’ll get a lot of traffic from it, but you will pay for it. Naturally the lower the PR is then the lower the cost.

Whatever technique you choose, building backlinks is critical to your search engine ranking success. You’ll want to acquire hundreds or if possible thousands of them. The important thing is that you get started and build up your links steadily over the months ahead so that you can begin to enjoy a steady and growing flow of traffic to your site.

Backlinks, To Buy or Not to Buy?

Backlinks are an important part of a websites search engine rankings. However quality backlinks, those from the topic of your website, and relevant area are of importance as well.

Anchor text, which is where the link is pointing will also increase your page ranking. Vary it to closely match the content of the page you are backlinking with.

Obtaining Backlinks

There are numerous way to obtain backlinks. We will go through several of them including paying for them, swapping and free backlinks.

One way is to ask for backlinks with others that you correspond or do business with. These may be people that you have a relationship online with such as from social media groups or those you have purchased products from. Once again, make sure that these are related to your business. You do not want just any link!

You can also purchase links directly from bloggers or other webmasters. This way is more difficult for the search engines to pick up on, as far as the buying part of. Search engines are not found of buying backlinks but they can increase your rankings.

This method is also the cheapest. Once again look for quality and contect as well as anchor text.

Buying Directory Links

Directories are like the phone book online. This can be a valuable place to add your link but it can also be costly.

Yahoo Directory:

This has many categories and RSS feeds

http://dir.yahoo.com/

Cost: $299.00 per year

Best of the Web

One of the oldest directories

http://botw.org/helpcenter/subitcommercial.aspx

Cost: $79.95 per year.

Addurl-free.com

No, this is not free. It was when I first start but it isn’t anymore. It does have 2000 visitors a day though.

http://addurl-free.com

Cost $40.00 for a placement or $80.00 for a featured placement.

Business.com

This is a business directory. Quality hits should be expected from this listing area.

http://business.com

Cost: $199.00 per year.

Link Exhanges

There are several out there. I will show you a few of them. Read how it works and all of the details before signing up for anything. This information is taken from their websites.

Mega Links Exchange:

Mega Links Exchange

Home | How it works | Register | FAQ | Terms of use | Contacts Us

How it works

Mega Links Exchange is a network of link publishers, who publish a directory on their websites which is managed by Mega Links Exchange. The directory consists of only one small 1kb file, linked from the publishers homepage. Link publishing is free because link publishers websites are included in the network. Mega Links Exchange checks all links in the network on an hourly basis, to ensure that no deadlinks will be published at anytime. If a dead link is found, the website will be instantly suspended and removed from the network. The owner of the dead link will be notified about this situation and asked to correct.

Signup as link publisher and get free links instantly:

1. Register for an account.

2. Create link campaign, submit your URL, title and description you want to display throughout the network.

3. Upload a small 1kb file to your server which is provided to you in the account panel, link to the file from your website.

The file will show a directory with links of all publishers, just as on other publisher sites that link to you. This will increase your backlink count instantly and daily, as new publisher sites join which display your link in their directories.

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How to exchange links?

Frequently Asked Questions » General

Link Market’s link exchange is accomplished by a very simple and extremely effective 1-2-3 link exchange step process. Link Market users sign in to their account and browse the link directory. Once appropriate links have been found, the user places them in the link cart. Once ready to send the link exchange request, the user goes to the link cart and sends the link request. At that time, the link request gets sent out. This is where Link Market’s 1-2-3 link exchange step process starts.

Terms:

Webmaster (RQ) is a Link Market member that is requesting a link exchange.

Webmaster (RC) is a Link Market member that is receiving a link exchange request.

Step

Webmaster (RC) receives a link request via e-mail and is instructed to log in to the Link Market account to respond to the link exchange request. Once logged in, the Webmaster goes to My Account and clicks on Current Jobs.

In Current Jobs, the Webmaster will see all of the jobs needed for a link exchange to take place. The Webmaster would then select one link and click on the respond link. This will then open a new Web page where the user may examine the link and either agree to link exchange or not.

If the user doesn’t agree to the link request, then this link exchange gets stopped and placed in the link request history. If the user does agree to the link exchange, then this link exchange request gets forwarded from the Webmaster’s current jobs and gets placed into Webmaster (RQ)’s Current Jobs.

Step

Webmaster (RQ) is required to place Webmaster (RC)’s link on his or her link page. Once RQ does, RQ submits his or her URL address to the link page where he or she has placed Webmaster (RC)’s link. At this moment, Link Market opens Webmaster (RQ)’s link page and looks for Webmaster (RC)’s link. If the link exists on the page, then step 2 is finished and this job gets moved from Webmaster (RQ)’s to Webmaster (RC)’s Current Jobs. Otherwise, this job gets marked as pending in step 2 until Webmaster (RQ) submits the valid link page.

Step

Webmaster (RC) is required to place a link to Webmaster (RQ)’s Web site. Once that’s done, Webmaster RC submits the URL address to the link page where he or she has placed Webmaster (RQ)’s link. Link Market opens Webmaster (RQ)’s link page and looks for Webmaster (RC)’s link. If the link exists, then step 3 is finished and this link exchange gets marked as successful. Otherwise, this job will be marked in step 3 as pending until Webmaster (RQ) submits a valid link page.

If you have any questions regarding Link Exchange, please contact us via our online contact us form. We will gladly answer any questions you may have.

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Free Relevant Links:

I liked what I saw with this one!

Here are their stats on their home page:

Total Links Exchanged -

42,404

- This Month’s Signups -

103

SIGN UP FOR A FREE ONLINE ACCOUNT NOW!!

1) Free Link Exchange Service - The Free Relevant Links software was built by Professional Search Engine Optimization Specialists. We were tired of link building; particularly the amount of time that was needed to do traditional link exchange was beyond ridiculous. We have simplified this process by eliminating the chasing of link partners and acceptance of those qualified partners once they are located. The FRL free link exchange service is a 100% automated link exchange system and once installed, needs no intervention on the end users part to continuously gain new qualified relevant link exchange partners. The longer you are a customer the more links that you will receive, we reward long term customers. Our system is W3c compliant therefore all your exchanged links follow White Hat SEO guidelines to the letter.

2) You are in control – Once installed our link exchange script allows you to target the keywords that mean the most to your business. You control up to five keyword phrases and two descriptions. This means each time a link exchange partner links back to you it will randomly choose one of your five keywords and one of your two descriptions giving you multiple keyword exposure. This is key in achieving top 10 rankings. You can control the Title, description, keywords and even the amount of links you display on your links page giving you full control of the look and feel of the content being displayed from our link exchange program. The links exchange page is also easily converted to your websites template so that it looks like every other part of your website.

3) No cheating, No headaches – Our reciprocal link exchange service is totally dynamic and updates your member’s area daily as your links are streamed to your website. If a member either removes the link exchange code on purpose or by mistake they are immediately emailed about the problem and have 7 days to remedy their link code issue. If the member does not put the link code back on their website, all link partners will drop their links after the 7th day. We have many various checks and balances in place to detect any person that attempts to circumvent our link exchange software.

4) Reports – We offer a member’s area inside our automated link exchange service where you will have access to our ranking reporting system allowing you to update your ranking report to view your keyword rankings in 3 major search engines (Google, Yahoo, and Msn). A ranking report history is also kept so you can see the progress and benefit of our free link exchange program. A backlink report is also available showing you all free reciprocal link exchange partners that display your links and the date they were added. By clicking on the link which takes you directly to their links page so that you may view your link live. Other reports such as total hits to your homepage and links page are there for your viewing and many more reporting tools on the way.

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Why Join Us?

There are other options out there but I would start with these. Happy linking!

Author:

Sandi Baker

http://letusgetitdone.info

One great benefit of article marketing is the generation of high-quality backlinks.

Simply put, a backlink is a link to your website from another website. There is a difference in quality of backlinks, and search engines know the difference. When marketers first learned that search engines rewarded websites that had many links from other websites, they began to establish link farms (they traded links with each other) that were nothing more than pages upon pages of links. Clearly, these links were not helpful, either for someone looking to follow a link, or for the search engines, who at first supposed all the links meant a high-quality site was being linked to.

As search engines got smarter, marketers realized they needed links to be contextual: that is, there should be a body of content (at least a paragraph) surrounding the backlink. This new understanding defeated the purpose of link farms, and marketers began to understand and see the value in article marketing: They could write one article, send it to 100 or more article sites, hopefully have it reprinted several times, and have contextual (high-value) backlinks from a number of sources.

Generating quality backlinks is one of the real values in article marketing. But search engines have gotten smarter still, and they now tend to see this as a form of link spamming (though not as bad as the link farms).

So how can a marketer engage in article marketing to generate backlinks without appearing to spam? By subtly changing your content for every 20 or so submissions you make. Some marketers change the context immediately surrounding their website link, which is good, but I suggest you go a step further and actually edit your article a bit. If you aim for a 300 word article, and you write 350 words, pare it down to your original goal and submit your article to 20 or 25 sites.

Then, edit your article (and resource box) by working back in the extra 50 words and removing others to create a very similar, yet different, article (you can keep the same title). Submit again to another 20 sites or so. You can do this over and over again, because each time you rework your article (and your resource box), you will change the content enough that it doesn’t appear as though you are link spamming.

This is how you generate quality backlinks that search engines love.

Did you know that you can browse blogs and forums your target market reads for about an hour a week and be marketing your business? You can!

First, find blogs and forums that attract your target market. The topic should generally be related to your business in some way, but probably not published by a direct competitor. The objective in selecting these sites is that your actual or prospective customers are reading them on a regular basis.

Next, read through recent entries to find posts where you have something useful to add to the conversation - preferably on a topic that’s directly relevant to your business.

Your goal in your comments is to be as helpful as possible. You want to do more than add a comment just agreeing with someone else or making a generic comment. You want to use your business expertise to assist the readers. The benefit of doing this is that people reading these sites will begin to see you as knowledgeable in your area and may choose to check you out further.

When you add a comment to a blog post, you’ll have a hotlink on your name that points back to your site. Forums often allow you to create a signature containing your site address that’s automatically included at the end of each post you make. Not only do these links help readers find your site, they may also help you build additional links back to your site that search engines see and value.

The more links to your site that exist - especially from ‘popular’ sites - the better your organic (non-paid) search engine rankings will be.

Note that some blogs will have the ‘nofollow’ tag set on their comments. This tag tells search engine spiders not to give the commenter credit for the link to his site. Blog publishers do this to discourage spam comments that have only the goal of getting links back to a site and not providing anything of value to the websites they were posted to.

While adding quality comments to blogs not using the ‘nofollow’ tag will help you with both readers clicking through to your site as well as search engine rankings, you don’t need to avoid the blogs that do use this tag. As long as you’re adding valuable comments, readers will click through to your site, and that’s who you’re trying to attract, right?

Also, the ‘nofollow’ tag does not stop search engines from following the link, it just prevents any of the weight being carried from that page to the page it is linked to; the search engine spiders still do follow the links.

I use a tool called Comment Kahuna (http://www.commentkahuna.com/) to find relevant blog pages by using keywords I specify. It will show me which blogs use the ‘nofollow’ tag so I can decide whether or not to post comments to them or only to ones without it. I can specify the minimum page rank of each blog page and how many results I want.

Once the program returns the results, I can go to each page to decide if I want to add a comment. If so, the system will auto-fill my name, email address, and web site URL and I’m ready to add a comment. If not, I can tell the program to skip this blog and move on to the next one. I can stop at any time and the system can pick up where I left off next time.

The best part about this tool is that it’s free, so give it a try!

There’s another tool available for finding relevant blog pages, Fast Blog Finder (http://www.fastblogfinder.com). It’s features are similar to Comment Kahuna, but it adds a few, such as displaying the page rank of each domain and page found. You can download a free trial and upgrade to the Gold version if you like it.

For finding appropriate forum threads, I use another free tool called BotSurfer. With this tool, you must find a list of relevant forums and input their URLs into the tool. It will then find threads within these forums that contain the keywords you specify.

To find relevant forums, just go to Google or Yahoo and type in your keyword topic: Online forum + Keyword

You can find this tool at BotSurfer (http://www.articlemarketer.com/affiliate_forum3b.php). Check out the forum posting tutorial links at the left, too. While they’re oriented toward affiliates of Article Marketer, the principles are applicable to anyone wanting to use forums to attract visitors to her business.

It goes without saying (I hope!) that you shouldn’t post comments to blogs or forums that are just links to your site. They will be considered spam, almost certainly be removed, and may cause you to be banned from the site.

I put aside about an hour each week to comment on blogs and forums. You obviously could spend much, much more time doing this, but remember this is just one of your marketing strategies and don’t get too carried away!

Give this technique a whirl and over time you’ll see the results yourself.

Article marketing is the lowest form of SEO for a number of reasons, while many people will disagree with what I’m writing, the fact of the matter is that there are much better ways to obtain backlinks and the backlinks obtained will deliver much better results.

The primary reason so many people write articles today is to create backlinks to their websites or the websites they are optimising for clients.

This does work to a degree; however, it is really the lowest form of backlink you can obtain.

Search Engines base the way they rank a website on a number of factors, the first on the content the site has available and the second on how relevant the site may be.

If a site has many backlinks, search engines “Think” the site has a high relevancy and will rank it highly.

Unfortunately, many people doing SEO think that this all they have to do get their website to the top of the search engines is to obain as many backlinks as possible.

When they don’t see the results they expected they are flummoxed and can’t understand why their SEO efforts are not working.

The reason why this does not work is because search engines know that the backlinks are not of any quality and will not put any value on them when ranking a website.

Thus, the site will not rank highly.

To put it bluntly, article backlinks are in the most part rubbish, and hardly count for anything. Period.

To achieve a good raking in the Search Engine results you would need to write thousands and thousands of articles, if this was your main way of gaining backlinks.

There are much better ways of obtaining backlinks while trying to do SEO.

The most effective form of SEO is Viral Marketing also know as link baiting, this involves people linking to your website usually through their blogs.

The benefit of link baiting is that once it gets some momentum it will grow itself as opposed to writing articles and submitting them to say ten article directories.

While your article directories will only give you ten backlinks, people blogging about your site and the word spreading may give you over a hundred. The benefit is the backlinks also come from a variety servers as opposed to the same old ten article directory servers.

The search engines will rank your site much higher if your backlinks come from many places.

You can create a viral marketing campaign by getting in contact with individual bloggers and offering them your product for review. Once you get a number of positive reviews, word will spread and you will have a successful SEO backlink campaign. If you are too lazy to contact individual bloggers there are a number of sites out there where you can pay bloggers to blog about your site.

Always get them to include a backline back to your site though.