If you have a website, chances are you understand the importance of backlinks. Backlinks are a measure of trust that search engines use to rank websites in the search results. The more backlinks (or incoming links) a site has, the more relevance the search engines will impart to that site.
There are several different ways to get more backlinks.
The first, and probably least valuable type of link is the reciprocal link. Reciprocal links are obtained by contacting other website owners and trading links with them. Google and other search engines give very little value to these types of links anymore, particularly if your links are to and from an unrelated site. Google may not ignore these types of links if they’re to and from related sites though. For example, if your website is about cars and you trade links with a site about flowers, it probably won’t help your site. However, if you trade links with a site that sells auto parts, Google may give your site a small boost for that. Most webmasters these days have given up on reciprocal links because the work/reward ratio is too high.
A more valuable form of incoming link is a one-way, non-reciprocal link. There are several ways to get one-way backlinks to your site. Some are easier than others.
Monday, 26 May 2008
Monday, 12 May 2008
Do You Do Pay Per Click Advertising?
The desire of every Internet marketer is to achieve a high position for a chosen keyword in the search engines. This means that when potential customers search on a phrase which you have targeted, they will find your website on the first page of the results returned by any search engine.
But how easy is it to get your site on the first page of the search engine listings?
The simple answer is that it is not simple, nor is it easy. Most search engines use very convoluted mechanisms (algorithms) to decide who is to appear on the top of their listings for any given keyword. One of the most common of these is a linking system, whereby weight is applied to sites that have many links (backlinks) pointing to their web site. You consider this a kind of voting system. There are many other factors that are applied to these algorithms, but for the sake of simplicity, think of it purely in terms of this voting system.
Not only is it time consuming to get votes to your site, the results are not usually apparent anytime soon. You could wait months for your work to bear fruit. That is not to say that you shouldn't be trying to get links, you should. It is a good medium to long term strategy that will deliver long term results. If you need to see results more quickly though, perhaps you should be thinking about pay per click advertising.
Pay per click advertising does offer some advantages over more conventional advertising techniques. Because you have control over your web site, you have control over who visits it. That is the nature of the Internet and effectively how it operates. Because of this, it is possible to target your ads quite precisely, so that your adverts fit specific searches that people make. Because the ads either form part of the search results themselves, or are discretely located on websites as Adsense ads, they are less 'in your face' than some other online marketing methods. Consequently, people who click on them are usually looking for something specific and are in a good frame of mind when they arrive (provided that you advert is on topic of course).
If you approach it correctly, pay per click advertising can be a very cost effective marketing strategy. With proper testing and controls on your spending, you can find good converting ads and then spend more money knowing that these ads will actually bring you a good return. One reason that many people fail at pay per click advertising is through inexperience. They bid too much on ads that haven't been tested to be working. Using this scenario, you could lose your shirt, so prudence is called for, especially whilst you are learning the ropes.
The other benefit (as alluded to previously) is the almost instant gratification that pay per click advertising brings to you. An ad you write can be shown on the Internet moments after placing it, and it is possible to get tangible results very quickly. And because of the nature of the Internet, you suddenly have access to millions of potential customers.
The other side of the coin of course, is to find ways to increase your organic search presence. Maybe you should be considering doing this at the same time as pay per click, so that you cover all your bases. The biggest thing that you need to do is to increase the number of links to your website, and from as good quality websites as possible. There are always innovative ways being developed to create backlinks to your site, so keep your eyes open for new ways to backlinks to increase your natural search engine position.
But how easy is it to get your site on the first page of the search engine listings?
The simple answer is that it is not simple, nor is it easy. Most search engines use very convoluted mechanisms (algorithms) to decide who is to appear on the top of their listings for any given keyword. One of the most common of these is a linking system, whereby weight is applied to sites that have many links (backlinks) pointing to their web site. You consider this a kind of voting system. There are many other factors that are applied to these algorithms, but for the sake of simplicity, think of it purely in terms of this voting system.
Not only is it time consuming to get votes to your site, the results are not usually apparent anytime soon. You could wait months for your work to bear fruit. That is not to say that you shouldn't be trying to get links, you should. It is a good medium to long term strategy that will deliver long term results. If you need to see results more quickly though, perhaps you should be thinking about pay per click advertising.
Pay per click advertising does offer some advantages over more conventional advertising techniques. Because you have control over your web site, you have control over who visits it. That is the nature of the Internet and effectively how it operates. Because of this, it is possible to target your ads quite precisely, so that your adverts fit specific searches that people make. Because the ads either form part of the search results themselves, or are discretely located on websites as Adsense ads, they are less 'in your face' than some other online marketing methods. Consequently, people who click on them are usually looking for something specific and are in a good frame of mind when they arrive (provided that you advert is on topic of course).
If you approach it correctly, pay per click advertising can be a very cost effective marketing strategy. With proper testing and controls on your spending, you can find good converting ads and then spend more money knowing that these ads will actually bring you a good return. One reason that many people fail at pay per click advertising is through inexperience. They bid too much on ads that haven't been tested to be working. Using this scenario, you could lose your shirt, so prudence is called for, especially whilst you are learning the ropes.
The other benefit (as alluded to previously) is the almost instant gratification that pay per click advertising brings to you. An ad you write can be shown on the Internet moments after placing it, and it is possible to get tangible results very quickly. And because of the nature of the Internet, you suddenly have access to millions of potential customers.
The other side of the coin of course, is to find ways to increase your organic search presence. Maybe you should be considering doing this at the same time as pay per click, so that you cover all your bases. The biggest thing that you need to do is to increase the number of links to your website, and from as good quality websites as possible. There are always innovative ways being developed to create backlinks to your site, so keep your eyes open for new ways to backlinks to increase your natural search engine position.
Wednesday, 7 May 2008
Creative Linkbuilding And Backlinks
If you market anything on the Internet, then you probably already know that a good ranking is important, but do you realise that achieving a good ranking is usually courtesy of a good link building campaign. Link building is a simply a collection of links on other sites that point towards your site. People usually think of these in terms of a voting system; a link is a vote for your site and that is a good analogy. Getting these links can be troublesome though. What possible reason would anyone have for placing a link on their site towards yours?
Traditionally, these links were done on a reciprocal basis. This means that for every link that someone gave you, you reciprocated by placing a link to them on your site. For years, this was good enough, and many webmasters established good rankings and obtained good website performance on the basis of reciprocal links.
Sadly, webmasters started to manipulate the system. The search engines changed the way in which the links system worked, and nowadays, a reciprocal link, whilst still counting to your voting system, no longer carries the same weight as it did before. No two links are create equal! Webmasters suddenly became aware of things such as one way links and anchor text. One way links are much as the name implies, links that are not reciprocated. Anchor text is the text contained within a link that is voting for you. Use of strategic keyword phrases in these links carries more weight in the search engines algorithms.
What is also more important these days is relevance and authority. By relevance, I mean if your site is about cuckoo clocks, another site about clocks linking to you would carry more weight than a site about poodles for example. Authority refers to the trust that is placed on a website by the search engines. If the search engines believe that you are an authority on cuckoo clocks, then any links you give out will carry more weight than a site without authority. It is a common sense approach really.
You can bypass the organic search results, meaning the results found in searches, which is usually free traffic, by using pay per click advertising, where you pay for every visitor. This is great in once sense because it means it doesn't matter a great deal if your site has millions of links or not. It gives you a chance straight away. Unfortunately, if you do it wrong, it can get expensive.
It is often very easy to get results by keeping an eye on current search engine trends. There are some very clever people out there who spend their days looking for ways to get authority links quickly and easily. If you asked an authority site for a link to you, they would probably charge you thousands of dollars. Some methods of getting backlinks allow you to achieve your goals much more cheaply than that.
Traditionally, these links were done on a reciprocal basis. This means that for every link that someone gave you, you reciprocated by placing a link to them on your site. For years, this was good enough, and many webmasters established good rankings and obtained good website performance on the basis of reciprocal links.
Sadly, webmasters started to manipulate the system. The search engines changed the way in which the links system worked, and nowadays, a reciprocal link, whilst still counting to your voting system, no longer carries the same weight as it did before. No two links are create equal! Webmasters suddenly became aware of things such as one way links and anchor text. One way links are much as the name implies, links that are not reciprocated. Anchor text is the text contained within a link that is voting for you. Use of strategic keyword phrases in these links carries more weight in the search engines algorithms.
What is also more important these days is relevance and authority. By relevance, I mean if your site is about cuckoo clocks, another site about clocks linking to you would carry more weight than a site about poodles for example. Authority refers to the trust that is placed on a website by the search engines. If the search engines believe that you are an authority on cuckoo clocks, then any links you give out will carry more weight than a site without authority. It is a common sense approach really.
You can bypass the organic search results, meaning the results found in searches, which is usually free traffic, by using pay per click advertising, where you pay for every visitor. This is great in once sense because it means it doesn't matter a great deal if your site has millions of links or not. It gives you a chance straight away. Unfortunately, if you do it wrong, it can get expensive.
It is often very easy to get results by keeping an eye on current search engine trends. There are some very clever people out there who spend their days looking for ways to get authority links quickly and easily. If you asked an authority site for a link to you, they would probably charge you thousands of dollars. Some methods of getting backlinks allow you to achieve your goals much more cheaply than that.
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