In my last article, “Discover The Easy Way of Building Link Directories” I told you about how search engine optimized directory pages can attract more traffic to your website, when people search for those related products or services that you have listed on those directory pages. I also told you that by maintaining well laid-out and organized directory pages, you could get reciprocal links from those websites. Or, in other words, you can get more inbound links to your website.

Link Popularity Means High Page Ranks!

Let’s face it - the greater the number of links pointing to your website, the higher is your page rank with most search engines! Google, AltaVista, HotBot - they all use the number of inbound links parameter as a very important factor in determining your page rank. As such, link popularity still plays a vital role in getting those top ranks and search engine positions for your websites.

Moreover, if those links are coming from high quality, related websites, then there’s nothing better than that! Search engines will love your site if all your links - both inbound and outbound - are completely relevant to the content of your web pages! And if your inbound links come from pages having a high ranking, then that automatically increases your page rank too! If such high-ranking pages consider your site worthwhile enough for linking to it, then your site must be offering some really good content!

The Catch

The only catch here is that acquiring a decent number of legitimate inbound links, from good-quality, related websites, requires a considerable amount of ingenuity and expertise. You don’t want to irritate the search engines by accumulating generic links, so that they throw you off their grid completely! Neither do you want to end up linking to a banned website!

As we discussed in the previous email, accomplishing this task can consume a lot of energy and leave you tired, even more so when you have to maintain more than one website! Besides, there is always the time factor that is essential for gaining the upper hand over your competition.

Use Of SEO Software For Link Maintenance

Using a reputable SEO software program, for establishing and maintaining your link partnerships, can greatly ease the burden off your shoulders! It can accomplish within days what would manually take months to achieve! A good link maintenance program -

• keeps track of the locations you’ve already submitted your site to
• prevents being linked to banned websites and thus, keeps you out of trouble
• allows you to manage information about all the sites connected from your website
• generates highly targeted directory pages automatically, based on the information specified for your outgoing links
• automatically uploads the link files to your web server
• customizes the structure of your link pages through automatic category creation and management
• has an internal link check feature, that easily and conveniently ascertains whether your link partners still have reciprocal links to your site or if they have been dropped
• effectively manages all your link email campaigns - handles all email tasks of contacting and managing prospective link partners, and also keeps them notified of any updates

Popularity: 90% [?]

Link building takes time and effort but the long-term benefits are worth it. So how will you build link popularity for your site? That’s our focus for today.

In a previous article, “Why Should You Build Links?“, I talked about how important it is to build your site’s link value since it will increase your chances of getting linking requests and gradually get other sites to link to you, increasing your link popularity at the same time. There are certain things that you must bear in mind when you build link popularity:

• Go only for the relevant links. Quality scores over quantity any day and you need to ensure that the links pointing to your site are from web sites relevant to yours.
• List your website in all the major directories.
• Submit your website to the about.com site if it is relevant to a particular topic.
• Which sites link to your competitors? Find those and try getting them to link to yours.
• Make a list of links when you get in touch with related sites for linking.
• You can also try to get websites complementary to yours to link to you. if you sell dog food, then you might want to a website dealing in kennels to link to you.
• While visiting websites related to yours, if you comment on their guest books or participate in their forums, include your website URL in your signature.
• Write a testimonial for the website you want to link to you so that they can link to it on your website.
• Affiliate programs are a great way to build link popularity

Search engines prefer to see links that come naturally to your site and there are several ways to achieve link popularity, increase your search engine rankings and generate huge traffic to your site.

How Great Content Can Help With Link Popularity:

Just as search engines love natural inbound links, they also love quality content. This is a major factor that brings in natural back links. You can write keyword rich articles, publish them in high-ranking websites, and also submit them in article directories. By adding a resource box where there’s a link to your website, you can see a lot of traffic and inbound links.

Consider Blog Publishing

By starting a blog, you can post the kind of content you want your niche market to see. Unlike in article directories, you can also freely add links to your products or services where appropriate. Blogs can be submitted to blog and web directories enabling you build link popularity. In addition, RSS syndication will also make you more visible.

Posting In Forums:

These are search engine friendly places where you can sign up for free and provide useful content. Apart from the advantages of establishing yourself as an expert, you can also generate a lot of natural inbound links to your site through your signature file on the forum.

Obviously, there are plenty of other ways to build links to your site. High page ranking by the search engines equals traffic equals better conversion rates and profits.

Popularity: 32% [?]

A major advantage of social bookmarking sites is their complement to search engine optimization which is something no website can do without. Who doesn’t like being Google’s favorite? These social bookmarking websites are easy to use. They work wonders for generating massive traffic to your websites when you add a bookmark tool on your web pages. Your visitors do the rest of the work - the ones that come by read your content, love it, bookmark it with the bookmark tool, and start the link building process. Does that sound sweet?

You’ll find social bookmarking most popular at the social marketing sites mentioned earlier - YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, Squidoo etc. one of the best ways to begin benefiting is to sign up with social networking sites that are suitable to your business and create a profile. To get the best out of your association, there are certain vital things you need to do that will help your website, which we’ll cover in a later part in this training series . If you are too impatient to wait, just go ahead and grab your copy of the complete Social Bookmarking Guide at right away.

Social bookmarking is a vital marketing strategy that has a major impact on the following for you, as an online marketer:

Links - You know inbound links are the biggest things that influence your website’s rankings. Using social bookmarking can give you millions of new inbound links to your website. And you what is really wonderful about these links? They are neither pushed nor forced nor bought - they happen independently and naturally.

Managing your reputation - Google just loves these social bookmarking sites. Depending on what you give your visitors to talk about on Digg, MySpace, YouTube and the like, you can literally shoot up in search engine listings very quickly.

Page Ranking - We all know just how long it can take for a new website to get ranked by the search engines. But with social bookmarking and media sites, you don’t have to wait. You can get the word out there by uploading videos on YouTube, creating profiles on MySpace, Facebook, Twitter -and build some links to these.

Search engine optimization or SEO - social bookmarking complements seo quite nicely. Here’s how it works - you bookmark your site or blog, creating an inbound link. Others visit and bookmark your content - so more links. Search engines love quality links. If your content is optimized well with the help of keywords - you are well on your way to seo success.

The collective outcome of the above benefits of social bookmarking is traffic that will convert to sales and profits. Mission accomplished! But how do you actually go around achieving what we’ve discussed above with the help of social bookmarking? You can get the complete guide right away and get started. Social Bookmarking Guide is an investment well worth it!

Popularity: 24% [?]

All search engine optimization programs talk about increasing a website’s page ranking. A high ranking with the search engines translates into greater traffic for your business. If you’re dealing with a specialized market, like pencils, for example, the market might be less competitive- the chances of getting a good page ranking with the search engines are pretty high. In a more competitive market however, like finance, it’s a much harder proposition.

The Science Behind It

The science behind how a page ranking works is pretty simple. Large search engines like Google analyze how many ‘vote’ links point to a particular site- the more links, the higher the ranking. Most search engines use a complicated algorithm to determine page rankings. As a result, search optimization tools are often geared around cracking or finding the gaps in this system.

So how does an online press release play into this situation? In simple terms, it’s a way to bypass all the algorithms by securing high rankings the easy way. Here’s why online press releases work:

• Internet press releases are fresh, unique content which the search engines love to hone in on. This actually one of the basic, golden rules of online marketing- if your content is original and unique, it will get indexed. Online press releases work because they are based in this simple principle.
• Online press releases also provide inbound links, which point back to your website. This is another search engine magnet and is a great way to drive more traffic your way. Inbound links are the strongest way to increase page rankings.

Critics And Skeptics

There are still a number of people who don’t believe that online press releases boost page rankings. This is mainly due to two reasons- one is that, believe it or not, the online press release phenomenon is still very new. Many don’t realize its marketing potential and find it hard to believe that it can be such a powerful tool. Secondly, a number of people have complained that these press releases simply don’t translate into thousands of dollars instantly. The reason for that is simple- the press release wasn’t effective. If you write a poor press release, you can count on poor returns.

The bottom line is clear and simple. If you write a strong online press release, you can bank on the following results:

• You don’t have to wait for your site to get spidered. You can count on landing a solid page ranking in a very short span of time.
• You can generate a large amount of traffic on your press release alone. This means people will be visiting your site even before the actual product is released. This is a bit like having people line up in front of a store before a big sale- that buzz alone can generate huge amounts of traffic.

To be absolutely sure of getting the best page rankings with your online press release get Press Equalizer now.

Popularity: 27% [?]

One of the easiest ways to boost traffic to your websites almost instantly is through social bookmarking. Bookmarking refers to the practice of saving bookmarks to a website. For example, suppose you are collecting information on Search Engine Optimization. You’d naturally be visiting a number of websites. One or two among these would stand out by offering you the most valid, up-to-date information. But you obviously don’t have the time to read it all and implement the techniques at once. What do you do? Simple. Just bookmark the specific website and visit it later. This is bookmarking.

A number of social bookmarking websites allow you to register with them and store your bookmarks and tags. Visitors who come to these sites search for information on a topic by keywords or tags that you, the registered user, have created. Most sites rank your websites based on the number of bookmarks to your site. So, the more bookmarks you earn, the higher your site is ranked.

Bookmarking, as you can see, is something that you absolutely MUST incorporate into your website marketing campaign. The advantage comes from the fact that it is one of the most effective ways to get quality inbound links. While you may get some amounts of direct traffic from bookmarking, your main aim is to woo search engines which love websites that have inbound links. Google calculates the importance of a website from the number of links to the website.

Obviously bookmarking your website manually is going to get tedious. The trick is to automate your bookmarking so you can post to multiple bookmarking sites without wasting your time and energy doing each one by hand.

Social news websites , on the other hand, are sites where users submit stories on their own products or services, or they link to articles others have created regarding these. Readers can read and comment on the relevancy and usefulness of the articles. The more number of readers you attract, the higher your visibility. Some syndication sites allow people to vote and rank websites depending on the number of votes the site receives.

Now, here is the interesting bit: of the nearly million registered users at digg.com, a mere 30 people contribute a third of the stories that hit the front page! The advantage? While voting occurs in large numbers, all the cool stuff is being provided by a small group of people. And that is the statistics for just ONE popular site. So, how much traffic do you think you can generate simply by submitting your Blog posts to different story submission services? There are hundreds of sites out there and all you need to do is find those that are relevant to your niche.

Both bookmarking and syndication are valuable additions to your traffic promotion and content exposure tactics. Together, they cover some of the best uses of Web 2.0 technologies and complement each other nicely. All you need in both cases is some good copywriting skills and some special attention paid to clear, effective titling. And of course, some amount of content generation on a regular basis. You’ll be surprised at how much serious web traffic you can generate using these two simple methods. And the best part is: you don’t even have to do it yourself, just automate the process and you can post to many services in one go! Driving traffic to your website just got as easy as write, click and go!

Popularity: 11% [?]

You can make article writing a key to topping the search engine Google. The key factors that determine the rankings in a search engine are:

• Whether it is optimized for keywords
• The number of links back to your site from other sites

The success you achieve depends on the above two factors.

Tips On Article Writing

• Share your domain knowledge
• Write an article of general interest concerning your domain knowledge. For example, if you are a doctor, you may write an article on, say “How to prevent cold.” You can be sure of instant traffic. Draw inspiration from your skill set. It is a powerful source for you to draw inspiration from.
• Leverage your hobby - Write an article on your favorite hobby. Article writing on subjects like photography, cooking, music, to name a few, draw popular attention.
• Article writing needs to be kept short - A four hundred word article is just about perfect. If a longer article is a must, keep it around 1500 words. Just ensure that the article has sustained reader interest.
• Focus on keywords - This aspect cannot be overstated. You need to optimize your article for keywords. Let your keywords turn into links back to your site. Include keywords in the headline, at the beginning of the article and a number of times in the main body of the text. This is a powerful mantra for article writing success.
• Submission of article - A good search engine will help you in finding sites to submit your article. Select a site most suited to your article subject and a one having a large number of subscribers.

On Publishing Your Article

• Who will publish my article? - Quite a few sites will lap up your article if it is well written. Informative and helpful articles generate a lot of interest. A prewritten article, having a good record of accomplishment of recognition, is a good bet. As an example, an article already published in a journal will have good readership from the right audience.
• Feedback from the publisher - Ensure that you get a feedback from your publisher once the article is published. Ask the publisher to notify you. You can set up a Google Alert. You will be notified the moment your URL is published. Take care to keep your link functioning.

Your Ranking

You will need to wait before you see results. Search engines do not update their index pages frequently. They may even do it once every two months. Even 100 inbound links may not make much of an impact on your ranking. Maintain a sustained interest in article writing. You will see results soon.

Popularity: 25% [?]