Incredible Words

As we all know Google uses their PageRank technology to measure link popularity by counting the number of inbound links to your web pages, and it is one of the many factors influencing your ranking. Most website owners do not utilize properly what PageRank they already have. Their linking campaigns could be in vain if they let a large number of outbound links drain their existing PageRank. If their site were a bucket it would be full of holes, to illustrate this point, if you had a large number of outbound links, which are not reciprocated it would reduce your overall PageRank. Be diligent in identifying sites that are no longer linking back to you anymore. Also keep in mind putting more than 50 outbound links on any page is not advisable. Also be wary of sites that link to you from pages with more than 50 outbound links. Google’s PagerRank is based on incoming links, but not only on the number of them. Instead PageRank is also based on the PageRank of the page on which your link is placed. For example a link to your site could be more valuable from a PR4 page with no other links than a link from a page with PR5 and 60 other links.

The factors influecing Google PageRank

The fact is that nearly half of your PageRank comes from within your site. As long as you have more than one page, and they are well linked you should be getting at least roughly 49% of your PageRank from internal links. If your site is particularly full of holes it may be less, but still substantial, and if you have plugged all your holes it will be more. PageRank is yours to control, and if it is targeted correctly it will help you considerably. Make sure you have a sitemap and all pages on your website are linked together with keyword rich link text instead of images.

Use common sense and careful language when asking for reciprocal links

Here are some helpful tips for requesting reciprocal links to keep in mind when you E-Mail or otherwise contact webmasters to ask to trade reciprocal links, I’ve have learned you usually get one shot to make a good impression. Over time I received some valuable feedback from other webmasters in assisting me on how to be requesting links, and since we are focusing on building proper links exchange channels, I would like to share this with our readers.

First and foremost do not forget to mention your own web address in the message. Yes, I have received letters about how I should reciprocate a link to a site and the Webmaster forgot the address. Likewise, do not forget to mention your own website’s name. Don’t forget to describe it either. You don’t have to write a book, just give a few sentences or a paragraph summarizing your website’s content.

Ensure you take a good look over the site you wish to link to you, be familiar with it’s content and mention some of the content in your request for linkage. Identify the common theme between the sites. If the site has a “Submit your URL” page, ensure that you use it and read the guidelines for submission carefully.

If you are sending an attachment, please ensure they are small in size, animated banners or code of any kind this is unusable in a reciprocal link campaign. Starting an email with an attachment of any size is no introduction and ultimately could deter the Webmaster from ever responding to your request. Attachments are not the way to start a conversation.

Being too agressive and persistent could work against you

Ask the Webmaster if they would like your complete package of reciprocal link codes and graphics before you send such information Do not forget to let the Webmaster know how they can add a link to your website and make the process as simple as possible. With your first correspondence, provide them with some of the HTML that they can place on their website, or on your own website. After sending your first request and they do not respond within 24 hours, do not ask again. Being too persistent will generally put webmasters off trading reciprocal links, be patient, I found that webmasters usually do respond within a one-week time span, if not then write a follow-up. You need a way to record which sites you have asked for reciprocal links to avoid this problem, I have used an Excel spreadsheet to record such information. Remember finding good quality links are important so you don not want to miss an opportunity by being too aggressive.

Make your reciprocal exchange request stand out

Most of what I have written seems to be common sense, but starting out with a good code of conduct and etiquette can only improve your chances of obtaining reciprocal links. Here is an example of a well-structured template used for reciprocal link exchange.

Greetings [Name],

I visited your web site, [Web Site Name Here] and found some great information regarding [Insert Subject Topic Here].

[If you have linked to the other site already, mention it here and give the URL of the link - ask them to approve your link to them or to recommend editing suggestions - DO NOT threaten to remove their link if they don’t respond in x days - these kinds of notes usually end up being deleted]

I thought you might be interested to know that we have a web site dedicated to [Your Site Topic - special points of interest].

We were hoping that you might consider linking to us and invite you to review our site at your convenience. [Depending on situation, insert further offer of reciprocal linking, banner impressions or exchange of services here]

If you determine that a link to our site is appropriate, please add it at your discretion, or might we suggest the following link and description: [Your site name and URL] - [Your site description - keep it brief, focused and not too much hype]

If you’d like to discuss this further, please feel free to contact us at [Your contact details].

Regards, [Full official signature lines here]

Keeping an eye on your inbound links

Now that you have started exchanging links, you will want to keep tabs on your inbound links. You need to visit the sites that accepted your link request. Check their link pages to make sure your link is properly placed with keyword rich link text. You also have to start checking the search engines to see if they indexed those pages where your links are placed.

To do so, I am providing you with link search commands on some of the major search engines, allowing you to view backlinks to your website:

Go to AltaVista, Google and type in the following information:
link:www.yourdomain.com

Go to Inktomi (AOL, HotBot, iWon, MSN) and type in the following information: INSERT URL HERE linkdomain:www.yourdomain.com

Go to AllTheWeb, Lycos (for AllTheWeb results only) and type in the following information: link.all:www.yourdomain.com

Shelley Murphy

Shelley is a freelance writier for Web-based e-zines for the past 5 years focusing on the evolution of technology. Her primary interest is in Search Engine Optimization continuing to educate small to medium sizes companies on the importance of marketing businesses for the web world.

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Search engine optimization requires applying a process of layering relevancy from various metrics, which in turn produce a document that can be extracted down to its pure form.

With so many types of online marketing tactics and proficiencies emerging daily, it is difficult for consumers to separate quality from quantify when it comes to using an SEO company for SEO services.

This form is linguistic context and relevance; and as a result of being environed by additional documents that are similar in nature, a web site starts to gain momentum and significance for all of the various phrases contained in those documents.

These are the on page considerations and despite overlooking the point this alone is the most crucial metric for rankings.

On page factors alone will not produce top rankings. You need to have a clear delimited site architecture to support the content.

This implies that search engines spiders can crawl the pages in your site and catalog them to appear in the index.

Crawl rates are assisted by increased post frequency, internal links, rss feeds that aggregate data as well as inbound links from other websites that are indexed more often. SEO involves managing the various stages of a campaign as well as the respective on page and off page metrics that contibute to rankings.

It’s not just about throwing content together, building links from anywhere and having a website alone.

It requires tact, skill, competitive inquiry and analysis to identify the keywords with the greatest amount of traffic and significance as well as real world experience to cultivate the proper strategies.

Identifying what each website requires is not as easy as choosing a one size fits all plan of attack from a dated SEO playbook. Each concession must be established on solid data and have an aggregate element on how that piece of the puzzle combines with the other metrics in order to succeed.

Search engine optimization and its principles have not changed much over the past 10 years, but the methods and techniques have evolved.Likewise, in order for your web site to appear in the top 10 positions using present-tense SEO techniques are needed to stave off contenders that are flanking your website at every turn, looking for ways to push you one step further away from the goal of ranking in the #1 position.

Understanding the diverseness, stability and consistence required to stay ahead of the relevance curve, not only ensures longevity, but also produces a better experience for users which is equally as important aside from just implementing SEO.

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One of the most critical aspects of any web strategy is how do I bring home the bacon in the serps. How do I get my site to rank substantially in Google or Yahoo?

One of the most all-important facets of doing well in the search engines (assuming the fundamental principles suchlike outstanding content are already set up) is bringing in links for your website. You can do this a number of ways, some looked at positively by the engines and some not so favorably.

One of the dependable ways, that the serps think is OK is link building with articles.

Fundamentally this calls for writing a genuine article, preferably about something from your industry, and then submitting it to a free article directory.

You really should not underrate the importance of link building. If there is one signal that means the most to the search engines, generally, it is links. Fine, there are piles of other signals, like the domain name, but you are kidding if you imagine you are going to be listed well, and easily seen, if you do not stimulate any links.

Building links with articles is easy. It is something the search engines say is okay. And, it adds value to the web, by providing valuable content that might be interesting or useful to users. The real question is what are you waiting for?

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More and more webmasters are building websites with publicly available content (data feeds, news feeds, articles). This results in websites with duplicate content on the Internet. In cases of websites build on news feeds or data feeds you can even find websites that match each other 100% (except for the design). Several copies of the same content in a search engine does not really do any good and so Google apparently decided to weed out some of this duplicate content to be able to deliver cleaner and better search results.

Plain copies of websites were hit hardest. If a webmaster was publishing the exact same content on more than one domain, all domains in question were eventually removed from Google’s index. Many websites based on affiliate programs suddenly took a big hit in loss of traffic from Google.com. Shortly after this started some webmaster forums saw the same complaints and stories again and if 1 + 1 was put together a clear picture of the situation was available: a duplicate content filter was applied.

Duplicate content is not always bad and will always exist in one way or the other. News websites are the best example of duplicate content. Nobody expects those to be dropped from Google’s index.

So, how can webmasters avoid the duplicate content filter? There are quite a few things webmasters can do when using duplicate content of any sort and still create unique pages and content from it. Let’s see some of these options explained here.

1) Unique content on pages with duplicate content.

On pages where duplicate content is being used, unique content should be added. I do not mean like just a few different words or a link/navigation menu. If you (the webmaster) can add 15% - 30% unique content to pages where you display duplicate content the overall ratio of duplicate content compared to the overall content of that page goes down. This will reduce the risk of having a page flagged as duplicate content.

2) Randomization of content

Ever seen those “Quote of the Day” thingies on some websites? It adds a random quote of the day to a page at any given time. Every time you come back the page will look different. Those scripts can be used for many more things than just displaying a quote of the day with just a few code changes. With some creativity a webmaster can use such a script to create the impression pages are always updated and always different. This can be a great tool to prevent Google to apply the duplicate content filter.

3) Unique content

Yes, unique content is still king. But sometimes you just cannot work around using duplicate content at all. That is alright. But how about adding unique content to your website, too. If the overall ratio of unique content and duplicate content is well-balanced chances that the duplicate content filter applies to your website are much lower. I personally recommend that a website has at least 30% of unique content to offer (I admit - I am sometimes having difficulties myself to reach that level but I try).

Will this guarantee that your website stays in Google’s index? I don’t know. To be most successful a website should be completely unique. Unique content is what draws visitors to a website. Everything else can be found somewhere else, too and visitors have no reason to just visit one particular website if they can get the same thing somewhere else.

About The Author

Christoph Puetz is a successful Entrepreneur and international book author. Websites currently operated by Christoph are Credit Problems Help and Highlands Ranch Colorado. PPC and SEO Services provided by the author can be found at Net Services USA LLC.

Note: This article can be published by anyone as long as the resource box (About the Author) is posted on the website including the links and that these links must be clickable. This last paragraph in italic font informing about the author resource box does not need to be ublished.

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