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How to Increase Link Popularity and Improve Search Engine Ranking

If you want to improve search engine ranking of your web site, you need to find a large number of high quality links from other web sites. These are called inbound links. Gaining links from high ranking sites that point to yours will increase your link popularity in the search engines.

The most popular search engine Google, places great significance on the link popularity of your web site. In fact, you can even get listed in Google without submitting your site to them, by getting other sites to link to yours. Finding many high ranking sites that link to yours, will improve the search engine ranking of your own web site.

Four effective ways to increase link popularity

1. Get your site listed in the search engine directories - first submit your site to the human edited directories of ODP (Open Directory Project - dmoz.org) and Yahoo (yahoo.com). Getting listed in these directories will give your site a boost in link popularity and improve search engine ranking in other search engines.

However, this may take some time.

You can get listed much faster by getting links from niche specific directories. Find these directories by doing a search on the major search engines with the primary keywords of your web site.

2. Provide high quality content - people will naturally link to your site if you have what they want (i.e. articles, software, etc). This will save you a lot of time searching for quality links yourself.

Optimizing your content with well placed keywords, will improve your search engine ranking dramatically. Search engines love focused content.

Don’t you love it when you immediately find what you are searching for?

One way of achieving this is by writing and publishing articles. You can include a link at the end of your article. When your article gets published, you will automatically have gained a link to your site.

3. Requesting links from other sites - request links from sites that ideally have a high search engine ranking. Start by including a link from your site to theirs. Include a paragraph describing what your link is about. This helps achieve a greater number of clickthroughs to your site.

Request that they do the same when linking to your web site. If you provide this for them (with some of your primary keywords included of course), and provide quality information, you will have a greater chance of gaining a high quality link.

4. Write a testimonial - write a favorable review of someone’s product or web site. Include the benefits you received through visiting their site. If that person wishes to use your testimony on their site, make sure they include a link back to your web site.

These are some of the best strategies you should implement to increase link popularity of your web site. It will improve search engine ranking and also boost your web site traffic.

One Way Linking Campaigns II

We have been discussing trips & tricks to generate one way incoming links into your site. To read the first part of this article read one way incoming links generation.

Then there is a way to generate links with the content that you have not as yet created. For this contact the established authorities (writers, publishers ) in your domain area & let them know that you are available as a resource for researching & writing on any topic from the chosen domain. When they will use you they will credit you for it. Also submit your articles to them. If they ever quote you they will link to you & the added advantage will be that their articles will get published in good places. Imagine an incoming link to your site from TIME or NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC.

What if you don’t have great content writing skills or the necessary expertise. Then do the next best thing. Ask for permission from writers to host their content on your site in exchange from link from it. So, if you are able to create a good selection of articles people will still link to you for a good compilation.

Now to the next step of creating one way links:

Apart from content you can use other free available downloads from your site as the carrot for people to link to you. This free carrot can be a good software tool relating to your domain or an ebook (content again) etc. If people perceive value in what you are offering chance are they will reciprocate by linking to you. Another way to leverage this free download scheme is to get listed in the directories & portals which offer a listing of freeware on the net. Search the SE using keyword freeware directories. Or shareware directories

You can possibly start with

http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/Directories/

or http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Freeware/Download_Locations/.

Or http://dmoz.org/Computers/Internet/WWW/Free_Stuff/Link_Pages/.

Or http://dmoz.org/Computers/Software/Shareware/Directories/

Survey the products & services in your domain. Pick up the good ones & write reviews for it. Then submit those reviews to the concerned site/s. More often then not they will use it while providing a link back to you for the credits.

Another way of getting some links is to hold a contest or host sweepstakes on your site. Once you have this in place get it listed with the directories which offer free contests & games listings. You can search SE for contest directories or start from here

http://directory.google.com/Top/Games/Gambling/Contests_and_Sweep stakes/Directories/

All this is effective when you are creating content or giving something free or reviewing someone elses’ offering. However there are ways to create one way links which are different than the abovementioned strategies. This entails leaving your footsteps where ever you go. In simpler terms keep your signature file ready( with a hyperlink) & then post it wherever possible.

Whenever you visit a site, write a comment in the guest book with your signature file.

Post messages on the forums or some chat rooms relating to your topic with hyperlink built in ( check which forums allow that).

Post messages in the usenet newsgroups with hyperlink. For selecting the right newsgroup to send a message you can search with your prime keyword on google groups.

Always remember to have your signature file in your email.

Another way of creating one way incoming links into your site is by either starting an online award category or by participating in an award category.

If you are an award giver the recipient will place your gif file(with hyperlink in it) on his site. If you win an award you will link to the award site & they in turn generally link to you.

Another play is to book additional space/ additional url on any other server & create a small site on it(related to your topic area with some unique content) & link it to the original site. A variation of this is to create a blog ( search SE for blog ) or start here

http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Web logs/Tools/?tc=1 .

Link this blog to your web site.

Another long winding however effective way to create incoming links is to host affiliate programs or launch banner exchange programs or launch a web ring program from your site. People who will sign up will have links pointing to your site from theirs. However this approach does take time & efforts to bear fruit.

In almost all these variations one of the most important parameters you can control is the anchor text.

These are just some of the methods that you can undertake profitably.

Once you are done with your one way linking campaign, its time to start with reciprocal linking campaigns

PageRank Sculpting Brings SEO Community to Brink of Disaster

PageRank sculpting is not the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. So says Google search engineer Matt Cutts in his very important article on PageRank sculpting. After watching people in the search optimization community debate PageRank sculpting for two years, Cutts finally revealed that Google had become so alarmed at the damage PR sculpting sites caused to their search visibility it had taken drastic action to undermine SEOs’ PageRank sculpting efforts.

Such a stunning revelation should have stopped people in the tracks, elicited a few mea culpas, and caused the SEO industry to change direction — so one might think. However, after an initial round of weeping and gnashing of teeth PageRank sculptors leaped back into business with new techniques that Google probably cannot detect and defuse. So for the people who believe that PageRank sculpting actually somehow works, things are back to normal. But for the rest of the stunned SEO community the current buzz about PageRank sculpting is completely unbelievable.

In fact, SEO blogger Michael Martinez — recapping the SEO community’s inability to detect how PageRank flow is mapped by Google through numerous tests — just wrote in an anti-PageRank sculpting article that, “based on that absolutely awful analytical record, reasonable people should conclude that SEOs would not be able to hit the broad side of a barn with a baseball bat even if one helps them swing the bat in the right direction.”

PageRank sculpting has been criticized since it was first proposed. Several notable SEOs wrote articles against the practice, and more than one Google employee advised people not to attempt PageRank sculpting. Despite these efforts to stave off defeat, PageRank sculptors persevered and led their clients down the path to disaster. Had Google not intervened, many sites would have fallen out of its index.

The fact of Google’s intervention should have settled matter, but it appears that the PageRank sculpting community is determined to not learn its lesson. Martinez notes that new PageRank sculpting techniques have recently been promoted across the Web, leading sites to lose visibility. This time there may be no way Google can stop sites from sculpting themselves into oblivion. “No one in this industry,” he says, “has any excuse for promoting such a clearly debunked and discredited technique.”