Karl Sultana asked:


Here are some myths that many webmasters faithfully follow. Test results show proof that these are no correct theories. They may be understood incorrectly or invented by wanna be gurus seeking attention. So let us start with the number.

Link exchanges are dead myth.

This practically means that you loose thousands of backlinks if you deny link exchanges.

There are certain guidelines to follow when doing link exchanges however they are great link building method. They are highly effective as well, you cannot say link exchanges are no longer that effective. They still are as much as they were. That was going to become some new theory as well. By effective one understand they are very easy to get and search engines consider them powerful.

What is dead for sure are blog comment posting probably, since almost all blogs are now using nofollow tags. The two most effective methods to get links are article submission and link exchanges. Obviously article exchanges are much better than link exchanges, but they are not effective, since it is too difficult to make at least one article exchange. So you cannot say they are more effective or more powerful. The reality is they are not.

Make link exchanges with only related or relevant sites myth.

This is big one, because even some popuplar people mention it, so webmasters believe into it more quickly. However luckily not everyone believes this theory. Again, results show that you can get links from any website. The more links you have the better.

It can be good idea to create a highly focused link directory first, but then you can expand. However if you are very familiar with link exchanges, and you can get many of them very quickly, you can get from any theme instantly.

Make link exchanges with websites that have a specific pagerank myth.

It means one thing, you loose a ton of links, denying certain websites. It does not matter if the site has pagerank zero or ten, it is still an important link to get. This will only affect your rankings in a positive way by exchanging links with all websites.

Ok, some have pagerank zero and you did all that work and have a pagerank of four. So what? Do you no longer want backlinks because you have a higher pagerank? Everyone needs backlinks, no matter your pagerank.

Article submission myth.

There are many things wrong, including the duplicate content theory. It strictly does not exist, webmasters simple understand it wrong. Submitting the same article to all article directories and everywhere is a great thing, you get all those one way links.

Spinning titles, descriptions and so forth is not required. No article, webpage or website will get banned by doing this.

However if you grab an article from some directory to put it on your website, it is a good thing to do if you link to the source. Not only because you should give credit to the author, but spiders appreciate it.

What you need to make unique is meta tags. I am not saying you can have exactly similar webpages on your website. That is not a good thing to do, obviously.

Making sure you do not fall victim to invented theories or incorrect ones is important. A new theory is created out of nowhere every now and then. This is happening all the time and these spread like a virus. People seems to love talking about what works and what does not.

However what is important is to stick with what works and avoid believing into new things as if they are some strict rules.

Adrian Adams asked:


With any online business, generating traffic to view the products or services you have to offer is essential. Since the World Wide Web is a huge arena, you can bet there is plenty of competition out there. It doesn’t matter how great of an item you have to offer if people don’t find out about it. To get your business the recognition it deserves, it is vital that you understand the various techniques for building links to your site.

If you want to rank well on the search engines, you have to have quality backlinks from other websites. Without quality backlinks to your site, you will not be able to rank well on the search engines. The good news is that there are lots of ways to build links to your site. Some of the ways to building these links are going to cost you money, but some of the most successful ways really won’t cost you anything more than your time.

One of first places you want to start is with submitting your website to the various web directories. There are 100′s of web directories that will give you a free listing for your website. The most important thing to do when submitting your site to web directories is to read the instructions. If you don’t follow the instructions, your listing will likely be denied.

There are also many places on the internet where you can submit articles for free. The articles can be informational in nature but they can’t be a direct advertisement for your business. However, at the bottom of the articles you can add a section that provides information about yourself and a link to your website if they want more information. Article marketing is one of the best ways to get quality one way links to your site.

When it comes to building links to your site, there are a couple of areas you want to pay special attention to.

Be careful with link exchanges. Link exchanging is the process of you placing someone else’s link on your web pages in exchange for them doing the same for you. Be careful of what sites you link to – you don’t want your site to be linking to a bunch of low quality or unethical sites.

Be especially wary of automated link exchange programs. These systems may save you time, but they are frowned upon by the search engines and may cause you problems. Google, Yahoo, and MSN may penalize your site for using automated link exchange programs (often called link farms), or they may even ban your site.

If you decide to engage in link exchanges, be very selective about who you do it with and how many you have. Make sure the ads you do place there aren’t a direct competition to what you have to offer. They should be for a product or service that is related to what you have to offer though. Try to do link exchanges with sites that will link to you from a semi-prominent page on their site.

When building links, be sure that you include your site’s keywords in the anchor text of the link. For example, if your site’s main keywords are buy widgets and blue widgets, you might use the anchor text buy blue widgets.

Don’t get caught up in the process of placing numerous ads for other sites on your own web pages. Not only is it distracting to the customers who visit your site, but it can cost you business. When a visitor clicks a link to somewhere else there is a very high risk that they won’t be returning to yours.

Building links is time consuming, but with hard work and some ingenuity, you can gain good search engine rankings.

Alpna asked:


What is Link Building?

Link-building is the process of obtaining inbound links from external websites to your own site to improve both direct referrals (people visiting your site by clicking on your links) and search engine ranking. It can be very difficult to get quality inbound links so I am listing a few proven methods that you can use to build back links that will help you boost your sites search engine rankings.

1: Article submissions

Write an article on a topic related to your site, then submit it to free article sites. Your article can then be reprinted all over the web, always with a link back to your website.

2: Press Release

Press releases can be very effective tool for alerting the media to your website and getting publicity through media coverage. You may include link to your site in the press release, there are number of press release sites for example prweb dot com

3: Free directory submissions

You can receive a free inbound link by submitting to hundreds of free directories. Just make sure you follow their submission guidelines and then be patient as it may take several months for your site to be listed.

4: Paid directory submissions

Why pay for directory listings if you can get them for free? Many webmasters choose to buy directory listings, for several reasons. First of all, your site will generally be listed much quicker (in most cases usually within 24 hours). Also, you can often get a higher quality link from a paid submission than a free submission as most of time paid directory will higher pagerank.

5: Three way link exchanges

Link exchanges are arguably not as helpful as they once were, but 3 way links are still excellent. For example you own Site A and you will provide a link Site B and Site C will provide you with a inbound link.

6: Forum posting

Join forums related to your site and become an active member of forums. Of course, you can include a link to your site in your forum signature.

7: Blog posting

Find blogs to your site and leave relevant comments on blog posting and leave a link to your site within the comment.

Steve Buchanan asked:


In order to choose service, you should consider a few things. When considering various link exchange methods, you need to think about how you are going to maximize the return of your efforts. There are many, different types of services, all offering some form of link exchange – more or less automated. Not all exchanges produce the same quality links, nor do they have the same features.

There are three common types of link exchange services;

Automated link exchanges:

You often upload a new page, or insert a script on part – or all – your pages. These services often charge a fee, and they almost always have many features, making it easy to decide where to link to and what inbound links to focus on. Some services take this one step further and offer relevant links within content. No links pages, real content. The downside is the lack of control over your outbound links – You have to trust the people running the link exchange to find the bad neighborhoods. This, however, is their job, and most of them are very good at it.

If you offer many outbound links, this can be a very easy way of getting many, many new inbound links. It’s fast, very manageable and not very expensive. Add the possibilities of getting links from content filled pages, and this makes for a good idea. Many offer affiliate programs, making it possible to earn commission as you gain link popularity.

Regular link exchanges:

Here, you need to send – or receive – a link exchange request for an exchange to take place. After both parties agree, it’s up to you both to add the link manually – and use the link exchange service to authenticate it. This is the most common service out there, it is often free, but limited to five request a day – with an option to upgrade for unlimited requests. With these services, you and no one else will check the sites you link out to, which is both good and bad. You don’t risk linking to a bad site – unless YOU choose to – but it’s also very time consuming. These services’ lack of control over their users link pages will naturally make their ability to detect cheaters bad, and many of them don’t even seem to be doing any form of control. It’s up to you.

The only limit to the amount of new inbound links is time – It is very time consuming, but with endless possibilities. You can find many of these services for free, making it the perfect choice for the webmaster on a low budget.

Link exchange directories:

This is basically a directory of websites, added by their webmasters as an indication of interest in exchanging links. These directories are excellent browsing for highly relevant link exchanges. These directories don’t have any fancy software, instead you have to check the potential link partner’s site and mail him or her, letting them know you are interested in exchanging links. The links exchanged are often of very high quality, s imply due to the actual mail conversation. You can together decide how and where the links should be placed. This takes some time, but because of the personal nature of these exchanges you will rarely be cheated.

A very, very time consuming link exchange method. Don’t expect many links using these directories – expect a few, good quality links.

Trying to move up the search engines, using nothing but link exchanges, is a difficult task, all though very much possible. It is a very good complement to your normal SEO strategies, and it can even be done for free. If you find a link exchange with an affiliate program, you can add a potential income to your rewards.