Methods of website linking

Reciprocal link

A reciprocal link is a mutual link between two objects, commonly between two websites to ensure mutual traffic. Example: Alice and Bob have websites. If Bob's website links to Alice's website, and Alice's website links to Bob's website, the websites are reciprocally linked. Website owners often submit their sites to reciprocal link exchange directories, in order to achieve higher rankings in the search engines. Reciprocal linking between websites is an important part of the search engine optimization process because Google uses link popularity algorithms (defined as the number of links that led to a particular page and the anchor text of the link) to rank websites for relevancy.

Relevant linking

Relevant linking is a derivative of reciprocal linking in which a site linked to another site contains only content compatible and relevant to the linked site. Relevant linking has become increasingly important because most major search engines stress that—in Google's words -- "quantity, quality, and relevance of links count towards your rating.

The engines' insistence on reciprocal links being relevant developed because many of the methods described below—free-for-all linking, link doping, incestuous linking, overlinking, multi-way linking—and other schemes were designed to unethically "fool" search-engines into awarding undeservedly high page ranks and/or return positions to sites engaged in search-engine spamming.

Though the engines warned site developers (again quoting from Google) to avoid "free-for-all' links, link popularity schemes, or submitting your site to thousands of search engines (because) these are typically useless exercises that don't affect your ranking in the results of the major search engines -- at least, not in a way you would likely consider to be positive they also took proactive steps to recognize linking schemes and downrate or de-index sites using them. This, in turn, led to the development of search-engine compliant link-management systems enabling webmasters to benefit from the upside of reciprocal linking without putting themselves and their sites at risk from inadvertently straying over into the dark side.

Three way linking

Three way linking (siteA ⇒ siteB ⇒ siteC ⇒ siteA) is a special type of reciprocal linking. The attempt of this link building method is to create more "natural" links in the eyes of search engines. The value of links by three-way linking can then be better than normal reciprocal links, which are usually done between two domains.

Two-Way-Linking (Link exchange)

An alternative to the automated linking above is a link exchange forum, in which members will advertise the sites that they want to get links to, and will in turn offer reciprocal or three way links back to the sites that link to them. The links generated through such services are subject to editorial review.

One-way linking

One-way link is a term used among webmasters for link building methods. It is a hyperlink that points to a website without any reciprocal link; thus the link goes "one-way" in direction. It is suspected by many industry consultants[who?] that this type of link would be considered more natural in the eyes of search engines. One-way links are also called Incoming Links or Inbound Links.

An effective way to build this type of one-way linking is by distributing articles through content sites and article directories. These articles generally contain an About The Author box that contains a one-way link back to the author's URL. When publishers use these articles, those one-way links help authors increase their page rank.

Multi-way linking

Multi-way linking is a technique used for website promotion whereby websites may create similar one-way links that each involves 3 or more partner sites. This provides each website with a one-way non-reciprocal link. This technique has evolved from reciprocal linking. The latest search algorithms have evolved to hold less favor towards websites that contain a high percentage of reciprocated links, and a higher favor towards websites that maintain a high level of incoming non-reciprocated (one way) links. How to filter out excessive reciprocal link schemes is even being mentioned in anti link spam patents.

The term multi-way simply refers to the fact that the link exchange is between 3 or more websites, however each link is singular by only pointing to one other website. Other means of linking that may increase your web presence may also include other indirect methods such as loading images, videos, content or RSS feeds from a third partners website.

Link campaign

Link campaigns are a form of online marketing and SEO. A business seeking to increase the number of visitors to its web site can ask its strategic partners, professional organizations, chambers of commerce, suppliers, and customers to add links from their web sites. A link campaign may involve mutual links back and forth between related sites, but it doesn't have to require the reciprocation of links.

Incestuous linking

Incestuous linking is an SEO strategy used by a webmaster to promote a collection of their own web sites, or those of close friends.

Due to the domination of the search engine market by Google, and its underlying PageRank technology, sites are deemed to be more important if they have large numbers of inbound links. If those inbound links are also from highly ranked web sites, they will boost the web site further. With the take-up of blogging and social networking sites such as MySpace, this has resulted in lots of web sites that are inter-linked and can artificially improve the ranking of a web site without merit, i.e. without valuable or unique content.

When the sites are not directly owned, this is referred to as a web clique.

Overlinking

Overlinking in a webpage or another hyperlinked text is the characteristic of having too many hyperlinks.

It is characterized by:

* A large proportion of the words in each sentence being rendered as links.
* Links that have little information content, such as linking on specific years like 1995, or unnecessary linking of common words used in the common way, for which the reader can be expected to understand the word's full meaning in context, without any hyperlink help.
* A link for any single term is excessively repeated in the same article. "Excessive" is usually more than one link for the same term in a line or a paragraph, since in this case one or more duplicate links will almost certainly then appear needlessly on the viewer's screen.

Underlinking

The opposites of overlinking are null linking and underlinking, which are phenomena in which hyperlinks are reduced to such a degree as to remove all pointers to a likely-needed context of an unusual term, in the text-area where the term occurs. Underlinking results whenever a reader encounters an odd term in an article (perhaps not even for the first time), and wants to briefly browse more deeply at that point, but he or she cannot without an extensive search of the article for a (possibly non-existent) instance of the linked term.

The extreme case of underlinking is a dead-end page, a page with no links at all. Usability experts discourage making dead-end pages.

Underlinking also occurs when web pages use the rel=nofollow attribute to prevent search engines from considering these links when performing link analysis, weighting or ranking.

Link doping(Google bomb)

Link doping refers to the practice and effects of embedding a large number of gratuitous hyperlinks on a website, in exchange for reciprocal links. Mainly used when describing blogs, link doping usually implies that a person hyperlinks to sites he or she has never visited, in return for a place on the website's blogroll, for the sole purpose of inflating the apparent popularity of his or her website. Since the search algorithms of many web directories and search engines rely on the number of hyperlinks to a website to determine its importance or influence, link doping can result in a high placement or ranking for the offending website.

Originally used in an essay published in Sobriquet Magazine and on Blogcritics.org, link doping has been confused with the related practice of excessive hyperlinking, also known as "link whoring". While the two phrases may be used interchangeably to describe gratuitous linking, link doping carries the additional connotation of deliberately striving to attain a certain level of success for one's website without having earned it through hard work (as an average athlete on steroids might perform better than a naturally gifted athlete not on performance-enhancing drugs).

Free for all linking

A free for all (FFA) link page is a web page set up ostensibly to improve the search engine placement of a particular web site. Webmasters typically will use software to place a link to their site on hundreds of FFA sites, hoping that the resulting incoming links will increase the ranking of their site in search engines. Experts in SEO techniques do not place much value on FFAs. First, most FFAs only maintain a small number of links for a short time, too short for most search engines to pick up. Second, the high "human" traffic to FFA sites is almost completely other webmasters visiting the site to place their own links manually. Finally, search engine algorithms count more than link numbers, they also check relevancy which the unrelated links on FFA sites do not have. Another drawback to FFAs is the amount of spam e-mail webmasters will receive from members of the FFA. Using an FFA can be considered a form of spamdexing.

Link popularity

Link popularity is a measure of the quantity and quality of other web sites that link to a specific site on the World Wide Web. It is an example of the move by search engines towards off-the-page-criteria to determine quality content. In theory, off-the-page-criteria adds the aspect of impartiality to search engine rankings. Link popularity plays an important role in the visibility of a web site among the top of the search results. Indeed, some search engines require at least one or more links coming to a web site, otherwise they will drop it from their index.

Search engines such as Google use a special link analysis system to rank web pages. Citations from other WWW authors help to define a site's reputation. The philosophy of link popularity is that important sites will attract many links. Content-poor sites will have difficulty attracting any links. Link popularity assumes that not all incoming links are equal, as an inbound link from a major directory carries more weight than an inbound link from an obscure personal home page. In other words, the quality of incoming links counts more than sheer numbers of them.

Link bait

Link bait is any content or feature within a website that somehow baits viewers to place links to it from other websites. Matt Cutts defines link bait as anything "interesting enough to catch people's attention. Link bait can be an extremely powerful form of marketing as it is viral in nature.

Link bait in search engine optimization

The quantity and quality of inbound links are two of the many metrics used by a search engine ranking algorithm to rank a website. Link bait creation falls under the task of link building, and aims to increase the quantity of high-quality, relevant links to a website. Part of successful linkbaiting is devising a mini-PR campaign around the release of a link bait article so that bloggers and social media users are made aware and can help promote the piece in tandem. Social media traffic can generate a substantial amount of links to a single web page. Sustainable link bait is rooted in quality content.

Types of link bait

Although there are no clear-cut subdivisions within link bait, many[who?] attempt to divide them into types of hooks. This is a short list of some of the most common approaches with brief descriptions:

* Informational hooks - Provide information that a reader may find very useful. Some rare tips and tricks or any personal experience through which readers can benefit.
* News hooks - Provide fresh information and obtain citations and links as the news spreads.
* Humor hooks - Tell a funny story or a joke. A bizarre picture of your subject or mocking cartoons can also prove to be link bait.
* Evil hooks - Saying something unpopular or mean may also yield a lot of attention. Writing about something that is not appealing about a product or a popular blogger. Provide strong reasons for it.
* Tool hooks - Create some sort of tool that is useful enough that people link to it.
* Widgets hooks - A badge or tool, that can be placed or embedded on other websites, with a link included.

Forum signature linking

Forum signature linking is a technique used to build backlinks to a website. This is the process of using forum communities that allow outbound hyperlinks in their member's signature. This can be a fast method to build up inbound links to a website; it can also produce some targeted traffic if the website is relevant to the forum topic. It should be stated that forums using the nofollow attribute will have no actual Search Engine Optimization value.

Link broker

A link broker is a company that allows you to buy or rent links. Link brokerages function in a few different ways but all offer the same service: selling or renting you links. The quality of the sites, the links they sell and the prices vary greatly, as do the effects those links can have at the search engines.

Blind link

Some links are created to intentionally hide the ultimate destination of a link until the user has clicked on it. It's accomplished via redirection (possibly a URL shortening service) or client-side JavaScript. Blind links are usually used for deceptive or advertising reasons, and are most associated with TGPs and Rickrolling.

Blog comments

Leaving a comment on a blog can result in a relevant do follow link to the individual's website. Most of the time however leaving a comment on a blog turns into a no follow link, which is almost useless in the eyes of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. On the other hand, most blog comments get clicked on by the readers of the blog if the comment is well thought out and pertains to the discussion of the other commenters and the post on the blog.

Source wikipedia.org

Search engine marketing and Search engine optimization different

Search engine marketing, or SEM, is a form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search engine result pages (SERPs) through the use of paid placement, contextual advertising, and paid inclusion. The industry peak body Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) founded by Barbara Coll in 2003, includes search engine optimization (SEO) within its reporting, and SEO is also included in the industry definitions of SEM by Forrester Research, eMarketer, Search Engine Watch, and industry expert Danny Sullivan. The New York Times defines SEM as 'the practice of buying paid search listings'.

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume or quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via "natural" or un-paid ("organic" or "algorithmic") search results as opposed to search engine marketing (SEM) which deals with paid inclusion. Typically, the earlier (or higher) a site appears in the search results list, the more visitors it will receive from the search engine. SEO may target different kinds of search, including image search, local search, video search and industry-specific vertical search engines. This gives a web site web presence.

As an Internet marketing strategy, SEO considers how search engines work and what people search for. Optimizing a website primarily involves editing its content and HTML and associated coding to both increase its relevance to specific keywords and to remove barriers to the indexing activities of search engines.

The acronym "SEO" can refer to "search engine optimizers," a term adopted by an industry of consultants who carry out optimization projects on behalf of clients, and by employees who perform SEO services in-house. Search engine optimizers may offer SEO as a stand-alone service or as a part of a broader marketing campaign. Because effective SEO may require changes to the HTML source code of a site, SEO tactics may be incorporated into web site development and design. The term "search engine friendly" may be used to describe web site designs, menus, content management systems, images, videos, shopping carts, and other elements that have been optimized for the purpose of search engine exposure.

Another class of techniques, known as black hat SEO or spamdexing, use methods such as link farms, keyword stuffing and article spinning that degrade both the relevance of search results and the user-experience of search engines. Search engines look for sites that employ these techniques in order to remove them from their indices.

Write SEO Content That Search Engines Love

The art of writing SEO content that search engines love is not always easy to learn even when specific instructions are available. SEO copywriting ideas often sound very simple in print, but then turn out to be almost impossible to accomplish due to lacking offline writing skills. Instructions for SEO text construction often forget to mention that good English-class skills are the secret to success while writing articles for the Web.

Not all English-class skills cross over into online writing. Proper SEO articles are written with different rules on punctuation. The comma, quote marks, and other writing symbols that go above or below normal text lines can be confused with programming script by the search engines. Professional SEO writers know this and will only write with proper commas or quotes in their text when employers demand this offline style of writing.

Search engines love keywords and keyword phrases that are placed into an article at specific density levels. For most styles of Internet articles, the good SEO content writers will use a density level of 2.9% or less per keyword. A keyword is a ‘key’ word on a page of text; no other word or phrase on the page can rank higher than the keyword in density or it becomes a more important keyword.

Keyword density and other important page qualities are calculated through arithmetic formulas that most professional SEO copywriters have with them on an SEO program while they write. These keyword programs will keep tabs on keywords and their density factors, the gunning fog index or page reading level, and lexical density factors such as sentence lengths that can affect reading levels, and keyword structuring.

It is possible to write high-quality SEO content that search engines love without a keyword program if the writer has a place to practice their keyword insertion techniques. Many beginning SEO writers will sign-up under a pen name for a large writing site where authors submit their writing to be paid by the click. Since this writing is going out on the Web, it is easy to try different SEO ideas to actually see what techniques work best.

Keywords and keyword phrases are hidden into the writing so that readers are not aware of their existence. There are different schools of thought on where they should go in an article, but most people do agree that the important words do best when they are sprinkled throughout the article. Many believe that current search engines read a page at the top first, at the bottom next, and then in the middle. Keywords are sometimes structured to be seen by the search engine quickly in this same type of sequence.

One quick rule to remember while learning to write SEO content that search engines love is that the writer should act like they are allergic to the word ‘you’. Google is the search engine that all Internet writers must please. Recently this search engine started ranking pages in part based upon conversation vs. information standards. Straight information words will be placed higher than ‘you’ style of conversation words.

Writers that learn to write SEO content that search engines love often do their learning over a period of time. If time is not available to learn to write properly in this format, there are inexpensive writing services online with qualified SEO text writers available. When hiring a writer through a service, always explain the exact SEO requirements that the articles need to receive the best results.

Source: seobay.com

Researching Keywords and Choosing the Right One

High ranking on Google is not just the only aspect of SEO to concentrate on; there is also the matter of high ranking with the appropriate keywords. There is nothing stopping you from using any obscure keyword phrase; it might be fairly simple to get a top ranking, but if no one is interested enough in the topic to search for that term, you are not going to get the traffic you need. So, you must get a hold of a phrase that brings in big numbers.

There is also another factor to take into consideration besides keyword traffic. The foundation of keyword researching is zeroing in on the right keyword phrase. You have to find keywords that go hand in hand with the subject matter of your business, products, and customers’ wants. Sure, using general keywords will get you tons of clicks, but specific long tail keywords will bring in directed traffic; that is what will lead to more sales and bring a higher ROL.

SEO Researching Tools at Your Disposal

There are tools for researching keywords that are free and some that have to be paid for. Any of them will assist in developing keyword lists, estimating potential traffic, and setting priorities. The best products on the market are Google AdWords External Keyword, Google Search Keyword, Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Rank Tracker, and Word Stream.

Source: seobay.com

Determining Keyword Density

Search engine optimization requires an understanding of keyword density as well as an understanding of how keyword density works in the overall analysis of your website. Keep reading to learn more about keyword density and what it may mean for your site.

The Meaning of Keyword Density?

The property of keyword density takes the text on your site and analyzes in a mathematical rather than a meaning-oriented way. Keyword density is defined as the keyword or key phrase percentage on a given page, taking the whole text into account. You can perform the math yourself to find out what the keyword density on each of your site pages is or use an online tool to work out the answer. The formula is:

Keyword Density = Keywords ÷ Total Words

So, if you have text content on one page of 500 words and 15 of those are key words, 5% would be your keyword density. This is easy to compute an the simplest hand-held calculator or a freebie calculator on your computer. You just enter the number of keywords, press the ÷ key, enter the total word count, and press the = key. Remember to switch from a decimal to a percentage by multiplying the answer by 100.

Using a Keyword Density Service

Because keyword density is considered an important factor in search engine optimization, you can find a number of free, online services to help you compute keyword density. There are at least two different styles:

• a window where you enter a textblock

• a window where you enter a URL

In addition, some just give you a straight percentage answer, while others allow you to include <meta> tag keywords or have the capacity to analyze multiple keywords on a single page simultaneously. You can search for to locate options for this service.

How Is Keyword Defined?

It's important for search engine optimization to know that a keyword is a word or a short phrase that is searched on. The keyword density is one way of establishing the topical focus of this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best text, and that's how Google sees it. But Google isn't the only game in town. Yahoo! has a different definition.
And Google, for example, sticks to this definition. But, Google is not the only search engine in town. Yahoo! in particular includes both synonyms and inflected forms (plurals, adjectival forms and the verb –ing and –ed endings, etc.) in its keyword count. For example, in the following text:

If you like to read books during your summer vacation, but don't want to buy them, come visit the library! Reading can be done in a comfortable chair on our air-conditioned premises, or all manner of readable material can be checked out and enjoyed in the comfort of your own home, at the beach, or poolside. Besides improving your mind, perusing the latest best seller can give you some great conversation starters.

If the keyword is read, Google will count one instance—the fifth word in the first sentence. Yahoo! will count read, reading, readable, and the synonym perusing: four times as many words in the same passage.

So if you're optimizing for Yahoo!, keep this in mind, and especially take note when choosing a keyword density counter to make sure its taking these elements into account.

Free for All Link Exchanges

Free for All Links: Links are often mentioned as an important aspect of website promotion, and you'll find recommendations of all sorts about how to best use them. But not all links will further your search engine optimization (SEO), and some may even scuttle it, so here's some explanation to help you avoid link pitfalls.

What Are Links?

The name link is a nickname for a hyperlink, an element in a web document connecting it to another section of that document (an internal link) or to another document somewhere on the web (an external link). External links can be used for a variety of purposes, including advertisement and promotion.

Besides being categorized as internal and external, links can be categorized by where they appear. It is possible to have links in running text, where they are generally identified by being a different color (and turn to a third color once they've been clicked). A link page where external links are collected and categorized is another popular place for links to appear. Thirdly, many advertisements, which may appear in a frame or elsewhere, show a graphic or text that is a link.

Using HTML, links can be set in at least two ways: the first is to replace the current page in the user's browser; the second is to create a new window (or tab) in the browser, while maintaining the connection with the address on your site. Because your visitor stays in contact with you with the second style of link, it is usually preferable.

What Are Free For All's and Link Farms?

There are various definitions of both Free For All's (FFAs) and Link Farms, so we have to define them before we can talk about them. Some people consider them the same thing. while others consider them two separate issues. The separate definitions is what we'll used here. We'll call a group of websites in which every site is linked to every other site regardless of theme and subject to be a link farm. (Be sure not to confuse this with a webring, a group of topically linked sites.)

The (usually fly-by-night) websites that are simply a list of links with the newest submission topping the lists are what is known as FFAs. Known for their ability to generate spam to submitters, they are difficult to disengage from, once you've signed up.

"Link Schemes"

Link schemes is the name Google uses for any links created solely to try to affect a website's page rank, and it takes a dim view of all such attempts to manipulate the system, as detailed in the Google Webmaster Help Center article "Link Schemes." Google Webmaster Trends Analyst John Mueller warns webmasters this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best to be wary of links that wouldn't exist if there were no such things as search engines and/or that you would be ashamed of people knowing about, such as links your visitors can't see (http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-Indexing/browse_thread/thread/1cf186fc2bf7fdbf/6ce5e820823ee277).

Besides links created only to increase page rank, Google also warns against links that are purchased and not either marked with a for the robots (see the article, "More About <meta> Tags" for an explanation of how to do this) or otherwise kept from influencing search engines; links to any kind of questionable site, whether run by spammers or home to any questionable (or illegal) materal; and "excessive" reciprocal links or link exchanges.

Create Good Title Tags

Good title tags: It's worth doing all the search engine optimization (SEO) you can to improve your page ranking, and one step you should not leave out is optimizing your title tags. Keep reading for some useful tips on how to create good title tags.

What Is a Title Tag?

In the head section of each web page is a place for several types of tags. A title tag is one such element, mandated to be in the head section by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium). Besides being a required element, W3C opines that the title tags should be "context rich," which means that they clearly and fully describe the page content, placing the page topic in context.

The form of a title tag is defined as follows:

<title>content</title>

and it appears in the head, making for the following:

<html>
<head>
<title>content</title>
</head>
</html>

All you do is replace the content place holder, which with a title that is unique to the page, preserving all the other bits exactly as they are shown.

What Does a Title Tag Do?

A title tag does different things depending on whose looking. A title tag is used for information provided to two audiences: spiders and web users

How Title Tags Work for Spiders

The spiders that collect data for search engines include the title tag data along with links and visible text to create the main three elements that will determine your page's rank. Spiders are specially tuned to keywords in the title tags and elsewhere.

How Title Tags Work for Web Users

There are six different situations in which people see the information in your title tag manifested:

• Directory employees or volunteers see your title tag as they consider whether to list your site after you apply. Keep in mind that the title tag is one of the main pieces of information on which they base their judgment.

• Webmasters see your title tag when they set up a link to your page.

• Searchers who do a keyword search and end up on a Search Engine Results Page (SERP) will see your title, in among all the other results for their search. Your title tag will be this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best competing for attention will all of your competitors (if you're a business), so you'll want to make it work in that company.

• Visitors to your site using most browsers will see the title from your title tag displayed at the top of the window. This is one reason it's good to distinguish the different pages of your site in the title tag.

• A visitor who has several windows tabbed—to, for example, do a product comparison—will see the initial letters of your title tag on the tab, so you'll want to make sure it will work to distinguish you in that situation.

• A visitor who bookmarks your site, will see your title as the default bookmark title.

White Hat Title Tags

White hat SEO techniques follow search engine guidelines for title tags. These are guidelines that fit those standards and result in quality title tags:

• Unless there's an extraordinary reason not to, write in phrases not sentences.

• Use title case, not sentence capitalization.

• Make sure the title tag matches the page content.

• Identify the site (by organization or individual name, as appropriate).

• Include keywords. Experts differ on where they should be placed. Keep in mind the human uses listed above in making your decision.

• Research your keywords using a keyword selector such as http://inventory.overture.com/ to help insure good choices.

• Create a unique title tag for each of your pages.

• W3C recommends that titles be less than 64 characters. Google has a 66 character limit and drops the entire last word if it crosses this boundary. Yahoo! has a 120 character limit, and simply cuts off after the last character that fits.

• Research keyword phrases before deciding which ones to include. Check a keyword selector for help, for example: http://inventory.overture.com/

• Avoid title tag stuffing, the black hat practice of piling a single title tag with loads of keywords and ignoring human uses of title tags.

• Avoid title tag stacking, the black hat practice of using multiple title tags stacked on top of each other in the head section.

Getting Listed in ODP/DMOZ

Short for "Open Directory Project" on the one hand and "Directory Mozilla" on the other, these two acronyms hide an important fact: this directory is a key place to have a website listing. Read on to find out the ins and outs of obtaining an ODP listing.

What Is ODP/DMOZ?

There are several important things to know about ODP/DMOZ

• This directory is explicitly not an attempt to catalogue all the material available on the World Wide Web. Instead, it aspires to be a "highly selective" and carefully categorized directory of pages and websites that meet the criteria of being "useful to users." Focused on objectivity instead of promotion, this largest of the directories is edited completely by volunteers.

• There are two directories that webmasters are recommended to submit to byGoogle Webmaster Help Center Guidelines, and ODP/DMOZ is one.

• ODP/DMOZ listings are free, unlike the Yahoo! directory which has a cost of $299.00 for submitting a directory listing and $299.00 per year annual fee thereafter if the listing is accepted (and the cost is higher for sites with adult content).

What's the Value of an ODP/DMOZ Listing?

ODP/DMOZ is one of Google's trusted sources, and while not having an ODP/DMOZ listing won't keep you out of Google, having a listing increases your site links because of its many clones and may help your rankings by Google. Moreover, Google is not the sole search engine that depends on ODP/DMOZ listings. The fact is, the data from OPD/DMOZ is used by its partners who include:

• AltaVista
• AOL
• Lycos
• MSN
• Netscape
• Webcrawler
• Yahoo

But an another important point is that your submission is not the only way your site can get into ODP/DMOZ. So before you submit your site, check to make sure it isn't already listed.

What Criteria Does ODP/DMOZ Have?

Now we come to some of the aspects of ODP/DMOZ that sometimes give webmasters difficulty. First, ODP/DMOZ reserves the right to reject any submission that they don't believe belongs in the directory and to do so without notice and without providing any recourse. There are, however, some submission guidelines that they provide, and following them is likely to improve your chances:

• Your site must contain unique Content—they exclude mirror sites, redirected sites, and sites filled with affiliate links.

• You must not submit your site multiple times or this in itself may ensure that you are not listed. There is a separate update process for changes after acceptance.

• Your site must not have illegal content of any kind.

• Your site must be fully developed, so don't submit while the "under construction" sign is still up.

• You must choose the proper category for your submission, both in terms of language and for content, choosing the most precise category available.

More information about criteria is available at http://www.dmoz.org/add.html

How Does One Submit a Listing?

• Make sure you understand the categories, using http://www.dmoz.org/help/cats.html as a resource.

• Start at http://www.dmoz.org and navigate to the category you have chosen.

• Click "Suggest URL" on the menu. This takes you to "Submit a Site to the Open Directory."

• Read the guidelines and fill in the form. Pay special attention to the required formatting for the title and site description.

• Read the terms of agreement, provided at the end of the form.

How Can You Improve Your Chances?

A number of people give advice about getting into ODP/DMOZ, but they make only a few simple points:

• Follow the guidelines to the letter.
• Submit to the proper category.
• Avoid promotional language.
• Don't even think about trying anything sneaky.

Common Issues

The two frequently heard complaints about submitting a site to ODP/DMOZ is that it takes a long time and that there is no feedback and recourse.

• Timing: ODP/DMOZ says that submitters should expect the process to take from 2 weeks to several months.

• Feedback: Whether your site is accepted or rejected, you will not hear from ODP/DMOZ about it – you will only discover the fact by either finding it in the directory this article has all rights reserved and is copyright by 100 Best one day, or never finding it there. There is no accepted way to contact ODP/DMOZ for follow-up, and no way to get a second chance.

Guide to SEO and Link Building

Per Comscore Market Research Study, 60% of average website's traffic comes from search engines. Google organic search alone drove an average of 41% of all traffic to the websites in Comscore study. For most websites then, the single most important thing to do to increase traffic is to optimize for Google's organic search algorithms and create content that speaks to relevant search.

There are two main categories for optimizing your website for search engines: On-page and Off-Page. On-page optimization means:

• Creating valuable content on your website
• Ensure your content is rich with relevant keywords for your industry
• Building clear site structure, navigation, and sitemap
• Creating friendly url that is packed with your keywords
• Get a good domain name that contains your keywords

Off-page optimization means

• Getting inbound links from other relevant websites

Why Links Matter For SEO?

Links are a source of traffic.

The more inbound links you have to your website, the higher the chance your potential customers could discover your products or services.

Relevant inbound links improve your organic search engine rankings.

Search engine robots crawl the web to analyze the vast amount of websites' contents and prioritize the relevancy of each website. Building relevant inbound links to your website with relevant anchor text is the most important thing you can do to improve your organic search engine ranking.

Your Website's Content And Inbound Links

Both content and inbound links are important for your website to rank high in search engine. Google controls 70% of search market and one of the most important factors in Google's search algorithm is inbound link popularity. The important factors when building inbound links are:

• The number of inbound links to your website
• The quality of sites that link to your website
• The relevancy of sites that link to your website
• The anchor text (Anchor Text) of links to your website

Ways To Get Inbound Links To Your Website

There are multiple ways to get inbound links to your website depending on your budget. Many small webmasters or bloggers often do manual link exchanges with other relevant sites. This process takes a long time and efforts, and two-way links are not as favorable as one-way links.

Larger companies often hire SEO professionals to do the arduous tasks of link building.

An effective method to build inbound links is to buy text links ads on relevant websites.

Tips When Buying Links

• Buy links from relevant websites
  Our search functionality allows you search for keywords that exist in the publishers' websites.
• Use various anchor
  text that reflects your Top Keywords. e.g: "Home Insurance", "USA Home Insurance", "Buy Home Insurance"
• Buy links that point to an important page in your website
  e.g: You may want to link directly to the category page of your e-commerce website. If you sell electronics, then you may want to link directly to LCD TVs category ( http://www.mystore.com/lcd-television )
• Keep your links for at least three months to see results
• Search engines also classify websites based on their IP addresses. The more unique websites with different IP addresses linking to your website, the better.
• Track your results by looking at your web analytics (Google Analytics, Omniture, etc). Look at "organic" traffic referral.
• Use Yahoo's Site Explorer to track the number of inbound links to your site. You can do query such as: "link:http://www.mywebsite.com"

To sum up, inbound links are important factor for you to increase your traffic from search engines. The right content optimization and link building campaign can help make your website appear at the top of search engine's results for your keywords, and thus bring more customers to your website.

Attracting Visitors To Your Site From Search Engine Results Page (SERP)

Almost 80% of the top 500 online retailers in North America buy or rent text links directly or indirectly through SEO agencies to optimize their organic search ranking.

Per Comscore Market Research study, 60% of average website's traffic comes from search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN Search. Google, Yahoo, and MSN control 90%+ of the search market share. Google organic search alone drove an average of 41% of all traffic to the websites in Comscore study. In short, Google search is by far the single most important driver of traffic to the average website, twice as large as any other source, ie: Yahoo, MSN.

Incoming links (also known as inbound links and non-reciprocal links) have gained unprecedented importance in high ranking of your website. All major search engines, including Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask Jeeves, Baidu rely on off-page factors such as Link Popularity to determine how important your site is in order to rank it high. Now web site optimization, no matter how nicely it is done, is not sufficient to get you good rankings. A sufficient number of good incoming links helps your website beat the competition to rank high in Search Engines Result Pages (SERP).

For most websites then, one of the most important things to do to increase traffic is to optimize for search engine's organic search algorithms and create content that speaks to relevant search terms.

One crucial way to optimize for search engine's organic search algorithms is by building inbound link popularities. Ask2Link.com provides an easy way for advertisers to buy and schedule link building campaign using automated system. At the same, publishers earn money for selling non-intrusive text links ads on their website.

Getting Inbound Links From Relevant Websites

If you have a website, the fastest and easiest way for it to get in all the major search engine indexes is to buy static HTML text link ads from authoritative and relevant websites. Even ten strong text links from relevant websites will get your site in the major search engine indexes quicker than promoting it on your own and this will save you a lot of time.

When you buy text link advertising with Ask2Link.com, you can quickly add multiple inbound links to your website from other authoritative relevant websites to help increase your organic search traffic and targeted traffic.

Search Engine Optimization Primer

In a nutshell, there are two major categories of search engine optimization: Onsite (on-page) optimization and Offsite (off-page) optimization.

Onsite optimization means building website that is rich with content and your relevant keywords, proper H1 and Title tags, clear site structure, and getting a good domain name.

Offsite optimization means getting relevant websites to place links to your site with relevant anchor text or keywords.

Did you know that Search Engine Optimization consultants and companies (SEOs) can get search engine rankings to jump with barely a change to a website's text? How do they get their client's websites in the major indexes so quickly? Well, search engine optimization experts learned long ago that SEO is all about "offsite optimization" and the key to a successful offsite optimization campaign is the proper utilization of inbound text links to a website.

In addition, text link ads provide more ways for customers to find your website: to click and navigate to your site. Text links boosts your search engine position, which is a key factor in driving potential customers to your site.

Browse wide variety of high quality text links in various niches

Inbound text links to your website is one of the most important factors in SEO (search engine optimization). Our text links ads are plain static HTML links that can help you get more traffic and increase your organic search traffic. We use server-side ad code so all links are rendered as plain links.

We have many high quality niche blogs and websites that can send targeted traffic and boost your search engine traffic for the keywords in your industry.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) offers you continual traffic beyond your initial investment dollars. You also only pay a flat price for each text link that you buy, so you don't have to worry about CPC (cost per click) or CPM (cost-per-impression) rates.

Keyword optimization

Source apromotionguide.com

Keyword optimization, the art of choosing the correct keywords, is one of the most important things related to search engine optimization. Sadly, it's also one of the things people tend to spend too little time on. They think up a few keywords quickly, optimize their pages a bit and then submit them to the engines. This usually results in not-so-good rankings under keywords that are poorly related to the site in question.

Before you start optimizing your site for the search engines, you should spend some time in figuring out exactly what keywords, or what keyphrases, you are going to target. Search engines are an excellent source of traffic, but in order to utilize them to their full potential, some effort is required.

What you should do is not to rush things. Sit down, open up your favorite text editor in one window and your site in another. Read through the first page of your site. When you have read it, stop to think. What is this page about? Which of the words that appear in the document describe the contents of the page accurately? What kind of words or phrases would someone use if he was using a search engine and trying to find documents like this?

When you have found the answers to these questions, write down the words and the phrases you have come up with. It doesn't matter if the list becomes too long, as you can always remove some of the excess words later.

When I do keyword optimization, I usually select one or two medium-popular keywords or phrases per page. These are my main targets, and I optimize heavily for them. Then I squeeze a few less common phrases and words into the body text, hoping that they will help the page to come up on some obscure multi-word searches.

Repeat this process for every page on your site. You should be able to create an individual, distinct list of keywords for each page. The different lists should not "compete" with each other, instead each should cover different areas. This does not however mean that there shouldn't be any similarities between your lists - it's perfectly OK to have some, but the lists shouldn't be 100% identical. It is better to have 20 good listings on different search terms than 20 good listings on the same one.

So, now you have your lists ready. The next thing would be to go to Overture's (GoTo) keyword suggestion tool and type in the different keywords and phrases you've come up with. The tool will tell you how many times each keyword and each phrase was searched at Overture during the last month. It won't tell you exactly how popular different words are, since the statistics contain only the searches executed at Overture, but it will give you a general idea.

Because Overture's data is not always 100% accurate, you may also want to visit WordTracker. The service is not free, but the trial option offers a chance to search for good keywords without having to pay a dime. By using both Overture and WordTracker and comparing what they think about the popularity of different keywords, you should be able to separate the words people search for from those that are rarely used.

If some of the words you were planning to select aren't commonly used in searches, you might want to consider dropping them from your list. If other words look like they are used quite a lot, then it might be a good idea to consider adding them. But remember to...

Keep the search engine optimization process in mind!

By now, your list is probably pretty full of very competitive, single-word terms such as "MP3" or "books" or "computers" or whatever. Scratch them. This might sound harsh, but if you're a novice, you have no chance of achieving a top listing under such terms. Even many (dare I say most) professionals tend to avoid them, as they are extremely competitive. There are hundreds of thousands of sites targeting them and even with excellent search engine optimization skills, they are very tough to conquer. What you should do is to narrow it down a little.

Think about different variations of these popular keywords. If you were originally thinking about the keyword "books", how about "buy used books online" or "antique bookstore"? These terms would be, not easy, but easier to rank well under. It is far better to be in the top 10 for a search term with medium usage than to rank 500th for a heavily used term. Select keyphrases that do get searched, but that aren't too competitive.

You might also want to target common misspellings, if some of the keywords related to your site are often spelled wrong . Unfortunately, it is hard to efficiently target misspellings without damaging the authority of your site. Would you buy anything from a person that can't even spell the name of his merchandise? Didn't think so.. So, be careful with those misspellings.

At this point, you should have completed your keyword optimization process and now possess a pretty good list of medium-popularity keyword phrases for each of your pages. I would recommend that you read the search engine optimization article on this site next. It will show you where you should place the keywords you have selected in order to achieve results with the search engines.

Image ALT Tags Optimization

These are the tags that tell what a .gif or .jpg is. Adding ALT (Alternative) descriptions to your IMG tags is quick and easy. You don't have to do any complex HTML coding.

An example of a ALT tag looks like this:

<img src="images/services-pic.jpg" width="100" height="78"
ALT="description here">

If you use images in your Web pages, its good practice to include Alt text for every image that a visitor to your site will see. ALT tags filled with keywords can also be used to boost your keyword frequency and help you achieve better rankings.

Image ALT tags also make your site more accessible to visually impaired people using text readers. Even if your Website is content rich, the alt tags allow you to reinforce what is highly important, the key terms, within the content.

The overall impact of using ALT tags, in terms of search engine optimization, is low. As they have become abused by webmasters who fill alt tags with streams of keywords, the major search engines have lowered the importance of ALT tags in their algorithms. However, ALT tags are a required element for standards-based HTML coding. Every image must have an ALT tag, and each ALT tag must be properly implemented.

Faster Way To Increase Your Alexa Rank

Are you feel your blogs alexa rank is too low, or increase slowly ... try to join a program called manual traffic exchange ... what is manual traffic exchange.

A traffic exchange is a type of website which provides a service for webmasters in exchange for traffic. It is similar to the autosurf concept with the exception that traffic exchanges usually use a manual rotation.
A traffic exchange website receives website submissions from webmasters that join traffic exchange networks. The person who submitted the website then has to browse other member sites on the exchange program to earn credits, which enable their sites to be viewed by other members through the surf system. This increases the number of visitors to all the sites involved. Exchanges enforce a certain credit ratio, which illustrates the amount of websites the surfer must view in order to receive one hit through the program for their promoted website. Many sites offer the ability to upgrade one's membership level for a more equal credit ratio. As the viewers are all website owners or affiliates, it is possible that some might find certain member sites interesting and thus make note of them on their own sites, sending more traffic their way. Most traffic programs also impose a time limit when members are browsing, ranging from 10 seconds to 60 seconds. Some incorporate the use of captcha to ensure user interaction. Almost all traffic exchange programs are free, although many of them offer special features to paid members and offer credits for purchase. Almost all traffic exchange programs encourage users to build their own referral networks, which in turn increases the referrers' amount of credits. The traffic generated in a traffic exchange can be leveraged by using a downline builder to assist the user in building a referral network in the many different traffic exchanges. In practice, traffic exchange programs are generally used by small business owners or marketers who either want free advertising or use the exchange programs for low-budget advertisement campaigns

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