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How to Get Search Engine
Traffic Part II
© 2003 By Jim Daniels
Continuation. Read part one
here.
When it comes to the
actual links, quality is measured primarily
by these two factors...
[X] WHICH sites link to your site
[X] Exactly HOW sites link to your site
The first one is the toughest nut to crack. Getting quality
sites
to link to yours is not easy. Naturally, you need a quality
site
yourself. (More proof of my advice above.) Once you have a
quality site in place, you can start getting links to it.
[X] Getting the right sites to link to your site...
Building a link strategy at your website is an important
step
that will help you more than you realize, especially as time
goes
on. So make it one of the first of your Internet marketing
steps.
But getting links is not an easy task. In fact, getting
quality
sites to link to your site takes a bit of originality. You
can't
just slap up a "link to us" page and hope the job gets done.
Below are two strategies I use. I invite you to emulate
these
strategies at your site....
a.
Pre-license all your best content.
Remember the content we talked about earlier? Well as you
create
your own tips and articles
for your website or email newsletters,
consider pre-licensing it to others. Pre-licensing it for
others
is as simple as including a short footer after your work. It
looks something like this:
"You have permission to reprint what you just read. Use it
in
your ezine, at your website or in your newsletter. The only
requirement is including the following footer..."
*Article by YOUR NAME, visit
www.YourWebsiteUrl.com for more
original content like this.
This takes no extra work on your part since you already
wrote the
article. A simple footer like that lets you pre-licensed it
to
the entire web. Your links will be growing continually with
no
extra effort. There are lots of websites in need of decent
content. Supply it and you can benefit greatly - if you do
it
right!
%%merge opt_in_ads.member_ad%%
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And the beauty of this strategy, is that
only sites in your niche
will use your content. This means your links will be high
quality
links from sites in your niche. This goes a long way with
the
search engines.
Note: If you need to see this strategy in action, visit my
articles archive at:
http://www.bizweb2000.com/articles.htm
b. Bribe webmasters into linking up.
The next strategy that can work very well is the "bribe". In
a
nutshell, you simply give something of value away to
webmasters
who links to your site.
When done correctly, this strategy can be extremely
powerful. All
you need to get started is a web page with a few text links
that
webmasters can use to link to your site. When they link up,
give
them a report or ebook about your niche. It does not have to
be
anything elaborate, just something that helps them learn
what
they came for in the first place.
Of course you want to let these webmasters know that they
need a
site in the same niche as yours. You really do not want
unrelated
sites linking in, just sites in your niche.
You can even automate all aspects of the "bribe" and save
lots of
time. See my "Internet Marketer's Resource Directory" at
http://linksmanager.com/bizweb2000/ for how I've done
that.
My directory bribes my visitors into linking to one of my
sites,
by offering two distinct rewards... a directory listing for
their
best Internet Marketing Resource, and a free ebook on
permission
email marketing.
There is no secret to this. And providing quality content
takes
work. I do it by writing articles like the one you are
reading
now. And you can do it by writing articles for YOUR niche
market
and posting them at your site.
If your site focuses on collectibles, don't just post up
your
items and hope to sell them. Instead, write an article about
a
specific collectible every week. Tell it's history and why
it is
worth so much. Write about how to tell an original from a
counterfeit. You get the idea.
In a year you will have 52 keyword-rich web pages (or more)
that
will help grow traffic to your website. In two years you'll
have
100+. And this content is the cornerstone of your website.
[Tech note: As you post each article at your website, make
sure
the new web page links back to your main page. Also make
sure
your main page has a link to either a site map or an article
listing. That will help search engines find all that great
content when they spider your site.]
I've been writing about this aspect of web marketing for
seven
years now. And I can remember a few years back when many
experts
were writing, "Don't waste your time on content, just put up
a
single page sales letter." But what would the web be like if
it
were just a network of single page sales letters?
The web is all about information.
Note: The tool that automates my link building
strategy is called
LinksManager. While there are many automated solutions
available,
be careful when selecting yours. Many are not search engine
friendly and using a link network or link farm designed to
trick
search engines, can be detrimental to your link campaign!
The one
I use is simply a time saving tool. It sends emails to new
submissions, checks their site for a live link to mine, and
gives
away my ebook when the link is verified. When visitors link
to my
site, their links are set up directly to my site, so it is
search
engine friendly. I've been using it for a few years now with
great success. And no, I'm not an affiliate. ;-)
If you have an Internet Marketing resource to promote,
submit
your site to my directory so you can see how it works. After
you
submit your listing, pay special attention to the page that
gives
webmasters the exact link code to paste into their sites.
You
should use a page like that at your site as well. It makes
linking very simple, even for new webmasters. In fact, feel
free
to copy the layout of that page and customize it with your
own
keywords and links for YOUR site.
Now let's get to that other aspect of quality links...
[X] Exactly How Sites Link to You.
For sure, text links are better than banner links. And text
links
filled with your best keywords are better than any old text
link.
For instance...
If you were trying to build links to your, let's say...
fishing
equipment site, how other sites display links to yours is
extremely important. To decide what you want those links to
say,
you need to research keywords a bit. The word "fishing",
would
seem obvious but it undoubtedly has a ton of competition. So
a
better idea is to find more specific words. You can do that
by
entering your main keyword into the tool at WordTracker.com
or at
http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/
and
you'll get a list of related keywords. This particular test
showed me that the keywords "fishing tackle" or "fishing
lure"
get quite a bit of searching as well. So those would be a
better
choice of keywords to use in your incoming links.
But how do you decide what those other webmasters will write
when
they link to your site? That's easy. You do it by giving
those
webmasters the exact code they can paste into their sites,
as I
do when someone submits a URL to my directory above. In the
case
above, the code they would be asked to put on their site
would be
a short sentence such as "Down-south fishing lures - clever
tackle for clever fish." The term "fishing lures" would be
hyperlinked to the fishing site. ;-)
In Closing...
OK, so is everything in this article all you have to do to
move
your site up the ranks of the major search engines like
Google?
Well, not really. There are lots of other considerations
such as
the title of your site. Your title needs to include your
best
keywords as well. And so does the text of your pages. But
I'll
save the details on these for another article. For now, get
busy
building quality content and quality links. They are two
keys to
the success of your website.
That wraps up today's tip! If you take one lesson from it
remember, QUALITY CONTENT plus QUALITY LINKS will bring you
lots
of quality website traffic.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
The author, Marketing Coach, Charlie Cook, helps
independent professionals and small business
owners
attract more clients and increase their earnings
with the 5 Principles of Highly Effective
Marketing.
Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Guide and
the
'More Business' newsletter, full of practical
tips
you can use at
http://www.charliecook.net |
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