It is familiar seo advice to hear how important inbound links are to your site and site ranking. Both reciprocal and inbound links have the potential to bring you a lot of traffic and not just from the search engines. Both reciprocal and inbound links can effect your current rankings within the major search engines, however they somewhat differ in strengh.
If you know anything about seo you will no that one way – inbound links are much more productive than reciprocal links, this is for a number of reasons:-
- They give more link popularity
- They increase PageRank more effectively
- You do not have to monitor them as intensely as reciprocal links
However there is one catch!! Quality one way links to your pages are difficult to get. So as budding seo’s we have to ask ourselves – How do we get them??
1 – Write unique quality content
You will be surprised how many webmasters will link back to your content simply because it was useful. The way to getting these links is by keeping your site fresh up to date and well written.
2 – Link directory submissions
There has been a lot of debate recently regarding these types of submissions and it is something I don’t really want to get into today. The fact remains directory listings are still highly efficient back links to your site. You can pay Yahoo! $299 and submit to DMOZ, but you also have to think a little broader. There are thousands of directories out there, especially ones that are topic specific, this means greater relevancy and a more effective link for your site.
3 – Article Marketing
This is another area that is currently under some contention, however it is the best way online to get highly relevant back links as you optimise the article for the page it is linking back to. It is time consuming and requires a certain amount of creativity however there is no better way to get those all important anchored back links.
4 – Buy text links
This is now been devalued by Google and if they find out you are selling links the links will automatically be devalued. For this reason I would stay away from buying text links to your site.
Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are not as bad as most webmasters will advise, if your exchanging links between two sites in a niche market the benefits in traffic and authority can be immense. However both sites must be as relevant as possible.
A common myth concerning reciprocal links is that if you have a high PR and link to a site with a low PR your site will be penalized in someway. This is absolute nonsense, you see pages don’t lower their PR by linking to lower PR pages they simply don’t get as much back compared to what they are giving. Also the exchange can still be beneficial as the site will almost certainly rise in PR equalling the partnership out in the long term.
Due to the above fallacy you may run into difficulties finding partners, however keep going as the traffic alone will be worth it.
Preparing for an exchange
Before you even think about emailing another webmaster regarding a link exchange, make sure you already have a link pointing back to their site. This helps to sell the exchange by demonstrating that you value the link. Make sure the links to your most important exchanges are on your home page.
You will find a lot of webmasters acting on seo advice and operating email software to ask for reciprocal links. For me the method is completely flawed and defeats the purpose of reciprocal linking. Any webmaster even considering exchanging links will want to see you have visited their site and are familiar with their content. This will help you personalise your email to the specific qualities of the site.
Would you link to a webmaster who had never visited your site?????
Just before I finish the best way to find link partners is by doing a simple search on your major keywords and visit the sites showing up for that search. There are few things you will need to observe:-
- How many other outbound links on the page (over 100 then it’s a no go)
- Are they your direct competitors? If so forget about it
- Is the page rank much higher than yours?? Low chance of getting it
- Is the content relevant?? Needs to be relevant in order to pass on more authority
When you search for sites during your seo efforts, take some advice and try your best to balance PR with relevancy.
If you know anything about seo you will no that one way – inbound links are much more productive than reciprocal links, this is for a number of reasons:-
- They give more link popularity
- They increase PageRank more effectively
- You do not have to monitor them as intensely as reciprocal links
However there is one catch!! Quality one way links to your pages are difficult to get. So as budding seo’s we have to ask ourselves – How do we get them??
1 – Write unique quality content
You will be surprised how many webmasters will link back to your content simply because it was useful. The way to getting these links is by keeping your site fresh up to date and well written.
2 – Link directory submissions
There has been a lot of debate recently regarding these types of submissions and it is something I don’t really want to get into today. The fact remains directory listings are still highly efficient back links to your site. You can pay Yahoo! $299 and submit to DMOZ, but you also have to think a little broader. There are thousands of directories out there, especially ones that are topic specific, this means greater relevancy and a more effective link for your site.
3 – Article Marketing
This is another area that is currently under some contention, however it is the best way online to get highly relevant back links as you optimise the article for the page it is linking back to. It is time consuming and requires a certain amount of creativity however there is no better way to get those all important anchored back links.
4 – Buy text links
This is now been devalued by Google and if they find out you are selling links the links will automatically be devalued. For this reason I would stay away from buying text links to your site.
Reciprocal Links
Reciprocal links are not as bad as most webmasters will advise, if your exchanging links between two sites in a niche market the benefits in traffic and authority can be immense. However both sites must be as relevant as possible.
A common myth concerning reciprocal links is that if you have a high PR and link to a site with a low PR your site will be penalized in someway. This is absolute nonsense, you see pages don’t lower their PR by linking to lower PR pages they simply don’t get as much back compared to what they are giving. Also the exchange can still be beneficial as the site will almost certainly rise in PR equalling the partnership out in the long term.
Due to the above fallacy you may run into difficulties finding partners, however keep going as the traffic alone will be worth it.
Preparing for an exchange
Before you even think about emailing another webmaster regarding a link exchange, make sure you already have a link pointing back to their site. This helps to sell the exchange by demonstrating that you value the link. Make sure the links to your most important exchanges are on your home page.
You will find a lot of webmasters acting on seo advice and operating email software to ask for reciprocal links. For me the method is completely flawed and defeats the purpose of reciprocal linking. Any webmaster even considering exchanging links will want to see you have visited their site and are familiar with their content. This will help you personalise your email to the specific qualities of the site.
Would you link to a webmaster who had never visited your site?????
Just before I finish the best way to find link partners is by doing a simple search on your major keywords and visit the sites showing up for that search. There are few things you will need to observe:-
- How many other outbound links on the page (over 100 then it’s a no go)
- Are they your direct competitors? If so forget about it
- Is the page rank much higher than yours?? Low chance of getting it
- Is the content relevant?? Needs to be relevant in order to pass on more authority
When you search for sites during your seo efforts, take some advice and try your best to balance PR with relevancy.
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