Link Building Strategies

If you want to get serious about driving more traffic to your website and improving your search engine rankings you need to develop a linking strategy.

Link building is on the mouth of everyone these days. On the forums I read, and in some newsletters I receive, there are people already talking about the chance that Google will start to penalize those websites that sell links, considering buying text links for ranking purposes to be a violation of its quality guidelines.

There could be a change that this could be truth, but there are smarter ways to buy links and some rules to follow that could help you, even if Google goes this way.

There are some companies offering specific services to avoid this penalty. Repeating the same anchor text in hundreds of link, is one thing to avoid. Search engines can easily detect anything that isn’t unique. So keep it unique by varying the anchor text.

Site-wide links are good to drive traffic. Don’t buy site wide links for link popularity/rankings.
Irrelevant links are also not good. Don’t go buying links for your automotive site from a script directory site.

There are also more rules you should follow, do some research before start buying links like crazy.

Eight ways to Earn Money Online

Lately, i have been searching for better ways of website monetization. I think Google Adsense alone is not good enough. It is normal to chase for more online earning, right? I have found a few ways of monetization, but almost all of them doesn’t sound too good, unfortunately.

1. Contextual Advertising. The best of these services seem to be offered by Google, with their Adsense program and by Yahoo, with YPN. Other services aren’t quite contextual and offer really low bids, in comparison with those. But, if you are banned by Adsense and outside US ( YPN allows only US Publishers ) you will have to choose from Clicksor or Bidvertiser, which seem to be the best, excluding Adsense and YPN.

2. Affiliate Marketing. This means putting affiliate banners or links on your website and getting paid for lead or sale. For sales you will be paid a percentage of the sale or a fixed amount. Of course, for many sales and signups, you have to put ads related to your website’s content ( e.g. Don’t try to sell auto pieces on kids website ). The best paying companies are: Commission Junction, ClickBank, Shareasale and AzoogleAds.

3. Contextual Advertising + Affiliate Marketing. Because you can add CPA banners along with contextual text ads on the same website, you should try to combine them for a better conversion. For me, the best combination seems to be Google Adsense and Commission Junction.

4. Feed Advertising. This seems to be a new concept of advertising and it’s good for websites with much subscribers at their Rss feeds. I only know a company selling this kind of advertising ( Text Link Ads ). They will put a text ad in your feed and pay you just as for link sales.

5. Link sales. If you have an interesting, high PR and high traffic website, people should be interesting in buying links or banners on your website. You can try to sell them directly, by putting a ‘buy’ button on your website or using a specialized link selling company. The most used is Text Link Ads.

6. Selling your own product. If your website hasn’t been built from scratch with the goal of selling a product of yours, you should think of providing the users a product related to the website’s content. There are more ways of doing this, like could simply selling it or using the idea from 6., requiring the user to pay a monthly/yearly/lifetime membership which offers him the ability to use or download the product/s.

7. Offering paid services. You can use your website to promote the services you offer, like Search Engine Optimization, Website Development, Web Design or Programming. This is still a monetization, because your website is the one that promotes you and your services.

Amazon Context Links Beta Program

The Amazon Associates program announced today the release of the Context Links Beta! Context Links are a quick and convenient way to add links to your website or blog and monetize your content. Context Links automatically identify the subject of the page and link relevant phrases within your page content to Amazon products, unlocking new ad inventory and saving you the time from having to manually create links.

Adding the links to your pages is easy and Amazon provides some options to customize how the links are displayed. The program is still on beta because Amazon wants to receive feedback so they can improve Context Links.

After you embed one simple piece of code on your pages, Context Links will identify and link contextually relevant phrases within your content to Amazon.com products. If you enable the preview functionality your site visitors will see a preview of an Amazon.com product relevant to the phrase we selected. Clicking on the link will send your site visitors to the product detail page on Amazon.com, and you will earn referral fees just as you would with any link you hand-picked.

Drive Traffic to Your Blog - 1

One of the most effective ways to generate traffic to your Web site is to exchange links with other Web sites. Both sites benefit from reciprocal links with sites that attract the same targeted audience. Links to your site increase your traffic, imply that your site is worth visiting, and may increase your search engine ranking. Links to other sites provide useful resources and give visitors a reason to return to your site.

When requesting a link, you will often get it -- especially if you offer a link back and provide good content. It is harder to get links if your content is strictly promotional. Link only to Web sites that reach the customers you want, provide information your target audience is interested in, and offer content and products that complement yours. For example, a Web design company may link to sites providing free graphics and diagnostic tools.

Five Ways to Find Linking Partners
- Search for Web sites to exchange links with by going to search engines and using keywords related to your own site. Email the webmaster and ask for a link exchange.
- Check out Web directories for appropriate sites.
- Go to Link-O-Matic (http://www.linkomatic.com), a directory of Web sites looking for reciprocal linking.
- Check out LinkShare (http://www.linkshare.com), a free referral program.
- Subscribe to LinkUp (email: Subscribe-LinkUp@CommerceStreet.com), a discussion list service and send messages to find link partners.

Tips for Creating Links
- Create a separate page containing links to other sites.
- Include a benefit in your listing to motivate people to click on your link.
- If you don't know how to create links to other sites, have your webmaster set them up for you. You'll need to provide the Web addresses of the sites you want to link to and a short description of what they offer.

How to Get Other Sites to Link to You
- When asking for a reciprocal link, provide a link first to their site and mention it.
- Then email a personalized message to the webmaster of the sites you want to get a link from. Provide the following information in your link request: Mention that you visited their site; compliment their site; invite them to visit your site; provide an incentive for them to link to you; mention how a link to your site will benefit their visitors; ask for a link; provide a suggested listing for your link.

Sample Link Request
Dear Potential Link Partner,

Would you like to exchange links? I find your site a great resource for our Web design clients and I've listed you in our links page.

I would appreciate a link back to http://quomodocunquize.blogspot.com. To make it easy for you, here is the suggested copy for the link: "THE DESCRITPION OF YOUR SITE."

Thank you,

Ark