Targeting Reciprocal Links

Reciprocal linking is one of the most effective ways of driving targeted mass numbers of people to your website, however in order to be successful you've to carefully target and choose the sites you want to link with.
What you need to be doing is focusing on linking to similar high-traffic quality sites which will interest your visitors and which complement your site, not compete with it. Sending visitors to a competing site with a similar product is a big mistake because the chances are good that they'll buy your their product and not yours.
Try not to down-link which is what I call it when a site links with a site with far less traffic than it. Always aim to up-link with a few high traffic sites rather than a bunch of low traffic ones. The results are much better.
My favorite and first thing to do when looking for sites to target is to try a take traffic away from my competition. I do this by visiting http://www.altavista.com/ or any other search engine which will tell me which sites link to which.
Imagine for example you knew your competition was www.xyz.com. You would go to Altavista and type in link:competition.com leaving out the http://www. part. To follow the above format you'd type in link:xyz.com and do the search, Altavista will return all the sites in its database that link to www.xyz.com.These are the first few sites you want to link to because you know they're sending traffic and business to your competition and you want a piece of action too. Chances are if these sites link to your competitor they'll link to you too.
Depending on the industry of your business and your competitor, he or she could have hundreds of links so be prepared to be held up for quite some time. It's well worth it however because you're effectively taking visitors away from your competitors site by having your link wherever their link is.
The next way you can target sites to link with is by visiting one of the major search sites, either Yahoo.com or Google.com. The advantage these two sites have over other search sites when it comes to targeting links is that usually results from these are of a very high standard. In Yahoo.com's case it's because all sites are reviewed by a human editor and in Google.com's case it's because they use link popularity as one of the main factors of relevancy when returning results from a search meaning only good quality sites are returned.
You're on either Google.com or Yahoo.com, now enter keywords and keyphrases which relate to the theme of your website, remember you don't want to link to competitive sites so try not to be too specific on your search term. If I was doing this I wouldn't enter 'Internet marketing articles' because chances are most results would be competitive sites, I'd enter in 'Internet marketing' because it's a wide area but still related to my website theme and not necessarily competing with me. The sites that show up for these results are prime targets. Ask for links with these guys, next you can target the guys who have links to them. The possibilities are endless.
Article by David Callan. David is an Internet marketing professional and webmaster of AKA Marketing.com webmaster forums. Visit his webmaster forums for the latest discussions on search engines, website authoring and Internet marketing related issues and topics. Article Source: ArticleWorld.net

How To Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

Increasing your search engine ranking is our topic. A high search engine ranking for your website is so essential that if you have the slightest desire to actually succeed in your
business, there is no way you can continue to avoid this issue.

At least 85% of people looking for goods and services on the Internet find websites through search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The idea of optimizing your pages for high search engine rankings is to attract targeted customers to your site who will be more than likely to make a purchase. The higher your page comes up in search engine results, the greater the traffic that is directed to your website. That's what search engine optimization is about.

You can immerse yourself in all the technical information available online to figure out how to optimize your web pages to achieve higher rankings. Or you can look at a few simple items on your pages, make some small adjustments, and most likely see improved rankings quite rapidly. The first item you should examine is the title bar on your homepage.

The title bar is the colored bar at the top of the page. Look at the words that appear there when you access your home page. To increase search engine rankings, the words on your homepage's title bar should include the most important keywords or phrases, one of which would include your company name.

Then click on all your links and examine the title bars on the pages you access. Each title bar on every single page of your site should contain the most important keywords and phrases taken from the page itself. However, avoid very long strings of keywords, keeping them to six words or less. Avoid repeating keywords more than once in the title bars, and make sure that identical words are not next to each other.

The next item to put under your microscope is your website content. Search engines generally list sites that contain quality content rather than scintillating graphics. The text on your site must contain the most important keywords - the words that potential customers will be typing into search engines to find your site.

Aim to have around 250 words on each page, but if this is not desirable due to your design, aim for at least 100 carefully chosen words. If you want to achieve a high ranking on search engines, this text is essential. However, the search engines must be able to read the text, meaning that the text must be in HTML and not graphic format.

To find out if your text is in HTML format, take your cursor and try to highlight a word or two. If you are able to do this, the text is HTML. If the text will not highlight, it is probably in graphic form. In this case, ask your webmaster to change the text into HTML format inorder to increase your search engine rankings.

Next we come to what is called meta tags. I know this sounds like something out of science fiction, but it is really just simple code. Many people believe that meta tags are the key to high search engine rankings, but in reality, they only have a limited effect. Still, it's worth adding them in the event that a search engine will use meta tags
in their ranking formula.

To find out if your page is set up with meta tags, you must access the code. To do this, click the "view" button on the browser menu bar, and select "source." This will pull up a window revealing the underlying code that created the page. If there are meta tags, they usually appear near the top of the window. For example, a meta tag would read: meta name="keywords" content=. If you do not find code that reads like this, ask your webmaster to put them in. This may not do much for your search engine rankings, but any little boost helps.

Lastly, we come to the issue of link popularity. This is a factor that is extremely important in terms of search engine rankings. Almost all search engines use link popularity to rank your website. Link popularity is based on the quality of the sites you have linked to from your links page.

If you type in "free link popularity check" in a popular search engine, the search engine will then show you what sites are linked to your site. In the case that there aren't many sites linked up to yours, or that the sites that are linked up have low search engine rankings, consider launching a link popularity campaign. Essentially, this entails contacting quality sites and requesting that they exchange links with your site. Of course, this requires checking out the rankings of the websites you want to link up with. Linking to popular, quality sites not only boosts your search engine ranking, but it also directs more quality traffic to your website.

Search engine rankings are extremely important for a successful Internet marketing campaign. Before you go out and hire a search engine optimization company, try taking some of the simple steps listed above, and see if you can't boost your rankings yourself. Don't ever ignore this all-important factor in Internet marketing. Remember, the higher your search engine ranking, the more quality customers will be directed your way.


Timothy James is the sole owner of http://www.timzbiz.com/ which is an information portal containing numerous articles for webmasters. He is also the owner of http://www.timbozone.com/ which is a sales outlet for games and softwareArticle Source: ArticleWorld.net

How To Get Free Advertising For Your Website With Traffic Exchanges

Getting free advertising for your website is alot easier than you thought.
Your website needs lots of visitors (traffic) if you are going to make money from it. If you do not have a large advertising budget, traffic exchanges can be an effective way to advertise your site for free. Traffic exchanges, sometimes known as surfing sites, can bring a steady stream of visitors to your website, for no payment - very important for a business startup if you want to make money online from home.
There are two main types of traffic exchanges - manual exchanges and autosurf. A manual exchange requires you click a link after viewing every page, but you can log in to an auto exchange and leave your computer running. It is best to check every few minutes that all is well, to ensure you get your credits.
When you join a traffic exchange (usually free) you view other members' web pages in return for your own web page being displayed to other members in rotation. You log in to the exchange and surf, and you are credited for viewing other members' web pages. You allocate these surfing credits to your web pages so they will be displayed to other members.
There are some important elements in surfing for traffic, which may be new to you.
-- Paid/Pro Memberships - most traffic exchanges offer free membership with the optional paid upgrades. If you upgrade, you get extra benefits, possible an allocation of credits per month and a higher credit ratio for the pages you surf. You can also buy extra credits. You can decide whether a paid membership will help you after you have tried out free membership. I have usually found this gives enough credits.
-- Credit Surfing - all traffic exchanges allow you to earn credits in return for viewing other members' websites. Also look out for bonus credits: many exchanges will give you bonus credits for signing up, for surfing a certain number of pages, or they pop up as you surf, to see if you are paying attention.
-- Minimum Time Limit - you need to leave a site on your web browser for a minimum length of time before you earn acredit. This is normally up to 30 seconds.
-- Anti Cheat Mechanisms - to ensure that a real person is viewing your web site there are anti-cheating mechanisms.These mean that instead of clicking a "Next Site" button you have to click a specific icon such as a number, letter or picture, before you move onto the next site. If you fail this test repeatedly, your account will be terminated automatically, so pay attention!
-- Referrals - this is the fastest way to build up your credits. Most traffic exchanges provide you with referral pages and banners. You can use these to recruit yourself a downline. When someone signs up from your promotional web page or banner they are placed in your downline. This can earn you an immediate bonus plus a percentage of your downline credits, for example you get one credit for every 10 sites they surf.
There are hundreds of different traffic exchange websites. You can sign up for an account instantly, submit yourwebsite's URL and start surfing for credits. Some sites allow you to advertiseup to five web pages. I usually includemy homepage, plus pages promoting ebooks and free courses.
But the big question is - which traffic exchanges will give you results? Will you be promoting your website in the right places?
Traffic Hoopla (http://traffichoopla.com/cgi-bin/ref.cgi/21755/) produces regular reports to show the most productive and successful traffic exchanges to use. This report is updated weekly with the top 50 traffic exchanges and the top 10 new traffic exchanges. You can find out from this report who delivers the highest unique percentage of visitors and who will deliver quality traffic to your website. This will help you to decide,then you can sign up at the best traffic exchanges to get the biggest return for your efforts.
In the beginning you may want to set aside time to surf for credits - in fact some traffic exchanges require you tosurf a certain number of sites to activate your account. Most people find they can complete their surfing in less than an hour a day. In the longer term the best way to make traffic exchanges work for your benefit isto build your own downline. Then the credits increase as others do the clicking for you. You can recruit members by using the referral web pages of each of the traffic exchanges that you have signed up with or you can sign up with TrafficHoopla and advertise the 10 best traffic exchanges in one go. I have done this,and more than 50 people signed up under me in the first week. I now have a comfortable credit balance without needing to surf frequently, and I use my credits to promote my online businesses.

Adrienne Davis, Website Owner and eBook publisher. My Career Change Website advises on Franchises, Affiliate Programs, MLM. Web Hosting with Free Website Design. Sign up for Traffic Hoopla today. Find your Online Matchmaker. Article Source: ArticleWorld.net

What You Don't Know Can Hurt You
Let's talk about some of the off page optimization factors/techniques that you should never ever do. First let's dispel some popular myths.
1) If a "link farm" is linking to your website you'll get penalized and/or banned from Google FALSE
2) If unrelated websites are linking to you, your website will get penalized - FALSE
3) Page Rank 1 websites won't help you because Google does not display PR1 websites in their back link list - FALSE
None of the above are true statements for the simple fact that:
Anything a competitor could do to harm your website would NEVER be penalized by Google.
Think about it for a minute.If any of those could actually penalize your website, how many people do you think would simply add their competitor's websites from link farm websites,unrelated websites, and low PR websites? Unfortunately, it would be quite afew.
The only way you can getpenalized by off page optimization is if YOU link out to "bad neighborhoods", which would be:
1) Link Farms
2) Penalized websites(websites that are "gray barred" by Google)
Now, you would think this would be a pretty easy thing to stay away from, right? Wrong!
Example:
Take this case for example. Let's say I had a website and exchanged links with your website. At the time that we exchanged links, both of our websites were quality, related websites,with a Google Page Rank of 5. This would be an ideal link trade.
Ok, now several months go by, and in the meantime, I'm doing all kinds of "black-hat SEO"
Note: Black Hat SEO is simply doing all of the things that can get you banned by the search engines.
After doing all of this Black Hat SEO, Google decides to ban my website, which gives me a "graybarred Page Rank" and I'm no longer in Google's index of websites. I'm completely gone from Google. So what, right? I mean, you could care less sinceit's not your website...
Well, guess what? You are still linking to my website, which is now considered to be a "bad neighbor" and you could actually get penalized MAJORLY for linking to me,without even doing anything differently to your own website!
Think about that for a minute...
You could actually drop hundreds of search positions without even knowing what you've done wrong!
So what can you do? There is a software called SEO Elite (http://vizmon88.bryxen1.hop.clickbank.net) that allows you to see if you are linking out to any bad neighbors! If you are, thendelete their link immediately and I can almost guarantee you will see anincrease in your ranking.
There are various very useful options in this software. One of which allows you to check each website that you are linking to and tell you whether or not they could be a possible"bad neighbor". In one of the columns, if you notice any websites with a Google Page Rank of 0, this "could" mean they've been banned by Google. Notice I said "could". They could either be banned OR,more likely they're just a new website and their Page Rank hasn't been updatedby Google yet.
So, you'll want to write down which websites have a Page Rank of 0.
Then you'll need to select another option within SEO Elite. This option will allow you to see if the website is still in Google's index. You'll want to enter all PR0 websites into the text box, select the Google checkbox, and click "ok".
If Google returns 0 results for the website, that immediately tells you that they've been banned and youshould remove their link immediately!
You would be amazed at thenumber of websites that have no idea why they aren't ranking well, when they've followed ALL of the good SEO practices. If this is you and you're still not ranking well, I would venture to say that you might be linking out to a penalized and/or banned website.
SEOElite can be accessed at http://vizmon88.bryxen1.hop.clickbank.net/

LesBoyle is the webmaster of http://www.affiliatewebreview.com/SEO.html
Article Source: ArticleWorld.net