Although the concept of link building might seem very straight forward, there’s more to it than just getting those links.

Your overall link profile is very important. It keeps on amazing me how many people have no clue, yet spend  a lot of money on buying links or link building services.

2 of the most common problems many web site owners make;

1) Only links to the homepage – and even worse – trying to get your homepage to rank for all your keyphrases – big mistake!

2) Ignoring the links from your own pages – what a waste!

Now, before I go on; this blogs offers basic information about SEO and link building, but every site is different, that’s why you don’t have to be shy to contact me and ask advice. That’s what we do as SEO-consultants and we do it for free.

Free? What’s the catch? I hear you think. Simple; I want you to be impressed by our SEO knowledge, dedication to personal service and especially my honesty, this so I can convince you to order from us. Point being; SEO is an ongoing process, partly because some of your links will lose value or even disappear all together, but that’s not the biggest issue. The main reason why you can never stop with SEO is simply because the other sites want to jump over you in the rankings and therefore are spending time and money on their own SEO and link building. So, just to maintain a position you already have to keep on going with your SEO.

In other words, each time I can convince a new client to start ordering from us, I know that we’re in business for a long time to come. Not just because you’ll need it, but also because we will do whatever it takes to keep you satisfied and so to keep getting your orders.

You see, honesty is 1 of my strong points. But ok, enough about me and our free SEO-consult service. Back the issue at hand; typical SEO mistakes to avoid.

Ok, problem 1) – only links to the homepage.

Let me go straight to the solution and the reasons why to do this differently; first of all it doesn’t look natural, but even more so; links accumulate value. 10 links to 10 pages is worth more than 100 links to 1 page. Because the way google calculates links and their value, which they express in PageRank (PR), it simply gives more value to have links to as many pages as possible. let me put it like this; links pointing to the same page add up, while links pointing to different pages, and of course those pages linking to each other get multiplied! that’s your gain.

Another example in this category; many times a get a new client who made the mistake of getting homepage links only, and as usually that shows as the homepage might have PR3-4 for example, while the sub-pages have PR0 or even PR non-available. whenever I’m able to convince the site owner to finally get links to the sub-pages, it usually just takes a few links to each of those pages to get those pages all of a sudden to jump from PR0 to PR3-4 just like the homepage, and I’m not even talking about high PR links, not just some of the easy to get (=cheap for you) links will do.

This brings us to the point about links from your own pages.  Well, once your own internal pages actually have value, you can use those pages to link to any other page, and even more so, with the exact keyphrase as anchor text, as you need it.

I find it amazing how many people don’t realize that many times the very best links you can actually get are links from your pages, in other words links that are right there for you to grab with a minimum of effort.

That’s it for now, keep reading this blog for tips and advice, but don’t hesitate to contact us for free SEO consultancy or a SEO-quote.

As we said before, your aim is to get your website ranking high in the search engines. How successful you are in achieving this all depends on its online visibility. When we talk about visibility we are not only talking about internet users’ awareness of the site, we also mean how visible it is to the search engines. This visibility doesn’t just happen, it all comes down to hard work and continually building links.

The search engines decision as to where to place your website in the ranking system is due to a number of aspects. The most important aspect is building links and how valuable these links are. The more quality, one-way links your website has, the higher up the ranking system the search engine will place it. It may all sound straight-forward, but it is not so simple to get relevant one-way links from quality websites.

There are many directories in the World Wide Web but many of them are of poor quality and low standards. The first thing you need to do to achieve high quality links is to submit your website only to those directories of quality. Once you have found a good quality directory, submit your site under a suitable category. Certain details will then need to be filled in, the URL, keywords and your websites title with a short description.

After you have submitted your website details to a directory, this doesn’t mean it is automatically approved. Any directory of quality will manually assess the manual web site submission they receive. The editor of the directory will check through the details you registered with and evaluate whether the website contains original and relevant information and content. If the submission is approved, then you will receive a link from the directory. This is a valuable link to receive as these directories make an effort to maintain high standards for themselves by taking the time to manually check details.

Once you have your link from the directory, your website will be placed in a suitable category. This makes it all very simple for the search engines to locate your site and decide how relevant it is. The titles you entered when registering for the directory, become the ‘anchor’ or the ‘link text’ that link the directories to your site and the description you gave will appear under this title.

Now that you realize the titles you submit when you are registering for the directories become the links to your site, consider submitting titles with the purpose of targeting specific key terms or phrases for which you want to rank.  How the search engines rate your website is dependent on the anchor text of the links, so you will get a higher ranking if you target specific terms in your anchor text.

Compared to regular sites, blog’s tend to receive a much higher PR and rather fast; almost too easy!

There are plenty of reasons for why blog’s seem to gain PR so easily;

  • They have automated features like RSS and ping’s, which gives new posts instant distribution and so links.
  • They have a trackback system; sort of an automated link-exchange system
  • There are plenty of plugins that maintain the internal link structure automated, like related post links.
  • Blog’s frequently updated new, fresh content; the search engines love that!
  • Blog’s are inter-active; people can post comments, which make the pages longer.
  • and so on …

But ok, why blog’s get good PR doesn’t really matter to you; how to get links from those high PR pages, that what counts for your SEO and I’m about to tell you all about it.

So, question; how to get link from them? Answer; the easiest way; post comments in them ….

The possibility in blog’s to leave a comment results in even more fresh and new content that is added to the pages continually, and this makes the pages much longer and is one more reason why they tend to gather a much higher PR then a regular web page. So, the adding comments to DoFollow blog’s is as well good for you as well as for the blog owner; everybody gains from this.

From in the beginning blog owners have been rewarding their contributors with a link. That’s what we’re after; to get a link in return for contributing a valuable comment to a DoFollow blog or a DoFollow blog page that is related to your niche market.

But now the bad-news: these blog’s also get spammed a lot, so all kind of little tricks are in place to stop the spam as much as possible. Unfortunately a lot of bloggers and especially the developers of the blog script made a huge mistake by using the rel=nofollow tag to TRY preventing spam. They didn’t just failed miserably in their attempt; it didn’t stop and/or reduced spam at all, on top of that they caused tremendous damages to the whole concept of blogging and to the purpose of rel=nofollow as well. Because of this it is crucial to perform a lot of research to find blog’s that didn’t made that mistake and still give you a SEO-friendly, one-way, direct link. Because links with a rel=nofollow tag on them will not help your rankings and/or pass on any PR.

That is where we come in: we will research thousands of blog’s, to find those that are related to the content of your website, have a high PR (minimum PR2-on the pages, not just the homepage) and of course without the rel=nofollow tag. This means that we have to start with thousands, yes, thousands, not hundreds, but thousands of blog’s, to find just a handful of good blog’s.

Let me explain this first; what makes a link a valuable link?

  • the content-keywords of the site-page-blog has to be related-relevant to yours.
  • Direct one-way links;
    • DoFollow (no use of the NoFollow tag) Links
    • No redirects
    • No javascript
  • High PR
  • Amount of other outgoing links on the page.
  • Anchor text links – keywords in the link
  • Location of the link;
    • Anchor texts links embedded in the text are the best links.
    • The higher on the page the better.
  • Style elements; size, bold, within <header> tags etc.

There are a few more elements determining the value of a link, but those are the most important ones.

We will research thousands of blogs to make sure they’re indeed related and that the links are direct, one-way DoFollow links from high PR pages, some allow anchor texts as well. So the first 4 requirements we guarentee, and we try to get requiremnt 5 as well.

It’s only the location of the links where blog comments fall short; they’re not embedded in the actual post and are added below the page. Despite that, blog comment-links are very valuable links and will significantly improve your rankings in the SERP’s (search engine result pages)!

The first requirement – the page being relevant – related to your topic/keywords – is absolutely crucial!!

Why? Well, very simply; if the link comes from an unrelated blog/site/page the search engines will simply ignore it. In other words, if you get a link that has all the requirements except the first one, the links is still worthless.

That’s the main reason why it takes such a huge amount of research to come up with blog’s/pages that are in fact related to your topic, especially the keywords you’re aiming for.

We use many different tactics to research blog’s, which you can read in my explanation about blog comment research.

Now for the good-news: once we actually did all the research and give you a list of blog’s, all related and of high quality; it all of a sudden becomes incredible easy to gain a whole lot of very high value links really fast from blog commenting.

So the initially you have to invest in the research, once that’s done it will pay of really fast. Most of these high quality blog’s only gain their value because they make post frequently, so we just have to follow up on new post and make a comment to gain high value links.

We’re talking about PR2-3-4 pages and so links, even PR5-6 links are not uncommon, and PR7-8 pages are also out there, but those very rare of course!

Remember the true value of PR is exponential!

Although it’s from PR0 to PR10, it’s more like 1 link-point for PR0 to 100.000.0000 link-points for a PR10! That’s numerological not exactly how it really works; just trying to make a point here.

In other words; you really want links from those higher PR pages.

This being said; to find a blog page with PR4-5  - AND related AND DoFollow links – is already very high and extremely hard to find!

Many link building strategies have a wide range of benefits however there are also many options that give no benefit at all or provide only short term benefits.  We all value our time and especially our money so we need to avoid those link building strategies that waste our time and money and concentrate on the strategies that will give us the best results possible. In considering the different options for promotion and optimization for your business and website with link building there are details you need to know before you start.

So what should you know and do before you start in your quest to obtain incoming links from websites?

a) Relevancy to your topic: The links you obtain are they from pages that have a related content with your websites keyword topics.

When you obtain links from a topically related website these are the ones you need for your keyword targeting.  These kinds of inbound links will increase your website popularity and they will also improve your overall website general search engine ranking or visibility.  Links from topically related websites, which are called contextual back links, do wonders to increase the website rankings for particular phrases and keywords.

b) The website you are getting a link from is it a website that is already popular with human visitors as well as search engines.

The popularity of a website does matter and there are two important things to consider regarding the incoming links and the popularity of the website they come from.

i) Does the website have a high profile with search engines?

ii) Does the website actually deliver real people that visit the pages your website link is listed in?

The websites that you need to obtain links from should have an actual people readership giving a high “internal page” visibility within search engines. As an example there are a high proportion of article directory websites which use the “article marketing” link building method.  They generally have a high page ranking on their home page but often the internal pages are not popular and the page ranking does not follow through to any other pages.  That means they have people who submit articles but there are not actually any people who are reading the follow on pages of their website.

c) The links that you use will they be crawlable by the search engines and will they provide value.

A most important factor relative to beneficial link building is defining whether a link can be crawled by search engines or not.  Also important is whether the value is passed on to the receiving website, or your website.  When you receive inbound links from the following situations you may actually hinder any benefits from your work in developing your link building strategy. So if you are considering a link from a website with any of the below points noted your best option is to stay away from that site altogether and concentrate on other website opportunities.

-          Links included on pages that are disallowed by the robots.txt.file

-          Outbound links that have the rel=nofollow tag attached

-          Links on websites that have a disorderly internal linking system or with broken pagination prohibit the ease of crawling to the page where your website link is listed.

-          Any links on pages that meta robots have tagged as “nofollow” or “noindex”

-          Links on single pages or a website or orphaned pages as they are called that do not form part of a flowing linking internal system.

d) What kind of links are they? Dynamic redirection links, static links or direct links?

In consideration of your link building program you have to be sure that all the inbound links are one-way static links. Often you will find that website owners, who are trying to avoid passing Page Rank, will often redirect their search engine robots and their users via their own website as opposed to linking directly to your website. If these are correctly completed you still gain assistance in getting targeted website visitors through the links and it will increase the times search engine rotors crawl your site however dynamic redirection links will not pass Page Rank.  So if you are wishing to increase your website page rank then ensure that you are using websites that have one way or static links.  Avoid the websites with dynamic redirection links.

e) Are you able to use your own anchor text?

If you are building links to increase name branding or to improve your websites ranking relating to specific keywords then you need to be able to decide for yourself the anchor text that is being used as this is a major factor in the link building process.  When you are able to use keyword focused anchor text, or descriptive text shown with a hyperlink, this can help your websites keyword targeting.

There are a wide variety of link building strategies available for online business owners but as stated they do not all provide the maximum variety of benefits. In your decision to choose a linking program for your website make sure that your inbound links are improving your website visibility but also your position in the major search engines as well as being able to attract real people to your site from the links.  Now you have the basic information that should assist you in your goal, get to it!

How can you increase your chances for acceptance in directories? There are restrictions to being accepted by a directory and if you don’t follow directory guidelines set down by the directory you are most likely not going to be accepted.  Affordable and effective website promotion methods considered today for internet business owners are the use of directory submissions.   Some of the rules for directory submissions are in fact not written in the regulations of the directory itself and there is a right way and a wrong way to go about directory submissions.

There are thousands of SEO directories available online and they all have guidelines that must be followed and you need to ensure you follow the correct steps to ensure acceptance or at least have the highest possible chance to have your submission and your website accepted.  These rules apply if you are submitting to the directory yourself or if you obtain the services of a directory submission company.

1.    Submission of Home Pages only.
Some of the SEO-friendly directories available to you will only allow acceptance of your home page and generally deep linking is not allowed from these particular directories.  There are some directories that state they will permit deep linking with an individual page URL or using a sub-folder and generally you will be accepted if you try to use deep linking.  However if it is not stated that there is deep-linking then you will most certainly find your submission is rejected.

2.    Keyword targeting and website titles.
When you are submitting your entry you are generally asked for your website title.  Usually three to five words are permitted in the website title field; if your website title itself is very long then this may mean your submissions are rejected regardless.  This title usually will be the anchor text detail that will be used to link back to your website.  This field therefore is a very important aspect in the directory submission process. Some directories will request the website title be used and others will let you use some keyword targeting as well.  Either way you still need to ensure that your title and keyword information is within the guidelines or rules of the directory submission site.

3.    Category selection is a vital factor in directory submissions.
You must ensure that you select the correct category for your directory submissions.  This point cannot be stressed enough.  If you choose an incorrect category or an unrelated category it is almost certain that your submission will be rejected.  The directories generally state in their submission rules or directory guidelines that you need to select the deepest category option available.  That means you need to choose the category that is most directly related to your business product or service and website.  The deepest category is in fact the best option for you anyway and for your website but you need to be very thoughtful when selecting the category you wish to be listed under.  Good category choice improves your acceptance rate but also is the best assistance for your website as it will allow the directory listing to provide a contextual link back to your page rather than a standard back link that may not be relevant to your business.  The contextual links back to your page are much more important for your ranking and overall business visibility than a standard back link.

4.    Free Email Addresses.
Using a free email address during the directory submission will often also mean that your submission is rejected.  Make sure that you are using the domain email address rather than a free email address option.  The directories see this almost as a non person requesting entry to the directory and can, as stated, in many cases reject your request for submission.

The above pointers should give you a background into some of the requirements you need to keep in mind when submitting to directories.  Following these simple guidelines can increase your chances of acceptance.  Other options for increased acceptance are to use the services of a directory submission service for promotion of your website.  They will be able to give you a higher acceptance rate and a much better result for the investment of time and money to create the submissions yourself.

Follow these seo tips above and you will find whether you submit to the directories yourself or you are using a directory submission service that you will have a much higher acceptance rate and the aim of course is to improve the volume of traffic to your website.  By following the directory requirements you actually have a much better result because your entries will be relevant and therefore interested parties are more likely to be relevant to your product or business service therefore increasing your opportunity for profit.

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