Three Things You Must Do Before You Submit To Article Directories

To all writers and non-writers out there, now is the time to start digging up those creative writing skills.With modern communication technology comes the popularity of information-based marketing, which is one of the oldest and most effective techniques in getting targeted prospects to sites and converting them into buyers. This is

Requesting Links

Ahoy everyone! Here is my secret out to build a quality link exchange program for your site. Lets get straight to the point shall we?

Remember: Not every link you request requires giving a link back. Sometimes it is cheaper and more efficient to just to go target higher quality links. Sometimes you can just request a link and get it by being personal and empathetic. Other times links may require payment ( I personally never buy links cause I personally feel it is not really necessary for my niche and I have enough unique and quality contents in my site's portfolio).

Be Personal

The best way to go about acquiring links is to be as personal about it as you can. Look around their website and try to find personal information. The more you find, the better you are.

When e-mailing them, try to submit it to the person who runs the site, not a general info submission. If you can state where your link should go on their site and how it would improve their user experience, you stand a good chance of getting a link.

Off-topic, somewhat personal statements showing you share similar interests may make you seem more human and more connected with them and will make it easier to get links. For instance, if you found out that I like peanut butter, somehow mentioning that or joking about it in the e-mail will make me far more likely to link to your site.

Proper Link Request Buy Line

Another good idea is to make the buy line of the e-mail appear as a suggestion. If I see the subject line of the e-mail as "SEO Book website suggestion," odds are that I am going to open it. Feedback is a fundamental part of any successful business so I have to open it.

I like using the word suggestion versus feedback. If you use feedback, they may feel like you are tricking them. If you use the word suggestion, they are highly inclined to open the e-mail. Remember, getting someone to open the e-mail is half of the battle.

E-mail to Use

When building links, you are more likely to have a higher close rate if you use an e-mail address with the same domain name with the site for which you are building links. Hotmail and Yahoo! mail type accounts probably do not close as well.

Some people also send their link requests as though they are cute females.

Scouting Out Potential Link Sources

A good way to find candidates for links is to use the Yahoo! link search. Do a search on Google to find your top few competitors. Go down the list and perform a backward link check on Yahoo! for each of them. See the sites that link to them and see if you can get links from those same sites.

Also, look at the categories those sites are in and use the Google directory to get the best sites from those categories to link to you. (Once again, to do a backwards link check of a competitor's website, go to Yahoo!'s search box and type "link:http://www.evilcompetitor.com.")

The Cost of Links

Some people are afraid of certain links because they think those links cost too much money. An expensive link can also be a good deal though.

If a link is expensive, or if the cost of obtaining it is a significant amount of effort, money, a long wait, or the approval from a webmaster who is a stickler for quality, it means those links are not going to be easy to get. People who create $5 sites hoping to double their money will not usually be acquiring links that take hundreds of dollars or many hours to get.

As people continue to abuse lower quality links the high-quality links will only count more.

Finding Niche Link Sources

You can do a search for " + directory," " + add URL," " + submit site"...any of them. Start thinking of ideas like that and finding sources of inbound links should be no problem. You can search across multiple search engines and even search for various file extensions.

If you have a resource about the ASP language, it may be a good idea to search for ASP file types.

If you have a golf site with a Flash game on it, try to get golf links, but also see if there are some game sites or Flash sites that might be willing to link to your site.

If you have a beautiful site design or an XHTML and CSS compliant design, try to list your site on sites about beautiful web design.

If you are a site designer, consider creating free open source site designs and promoting them on OSWD.org.

Let the Link Sources Come to You

If you know how to create and format truly remarkable information then you might be able to gain a top ranking by

• Creating great content
• Buying AdWords ads for related keywords
• Letting bloggers and the media find your content via the AdWords ad
• Watch them write about you, and see your rankings improve as you build links.

If you buy AdSense ads, you can run Google's position placement report to find where Google was syndicating your ad to. Webmasters who own these related pages might be willing to sell you links if you contact them.

Affiliate Program Links

Most affiliate programs redirect your links through third-party websites that prevent the link from parsing link popularity.

In addition, many other websites use query strings on the links. These typically will not parse PageRank to the destination page. A query string is something like "?affil=34565" at the end of the link. This identifies the affiliate for tracking purposes.

Even if affiliate programs do not provide static text links, they still help raise your brand awareness and build trust in the eyes of your prospective customers. A well-run affiliate program can also mean that some of your affiliates are crowding some of your competitors out of the search results.

Problems With SEO-Friendly Affiliate Programs (How They Can Hurt Affiliates, But Help Merchants)

If you build enough link popularity pointing to an affiliate page, it can outrank the regular version of the document. But if many good affiliates are promoting a product and those pages link back to the home page of the site they are promoting, then you can end up pushing a ton of PageRank to the home page of the merchant site. That PageRank can filter down to the regular (or non-affiliate) version of the page, which may eventually outrank all the affiliates.

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Ishtiaq Saddam
Theme Designer
http://www.nokiasymbianthemes.com