34 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 34 3. Even if you offer a reciprocal link a link back to their website most webmasters of high PR sites will not be interested because its extra work. Whats more they wont want to obscure the purpose of their site with hundreds of links relevant or not they rankmaniac 2012 dont want to look like a directory to their customers. rankmaniac 2012 TIP If you decide to manually look for link partners one way of assessing a sites importance is to look at their Google PageRank PR. PR is how Google scores importance. It gives all sites a mark out of 10. Any site with a PR of 4 or above is rankmaniac 2012 generally considered a worthy link partner. By downloading the Google Toolbar from httptoolbar.google.com you can view the PR of any site you visit. How long will it take A long time rankmaniac 2012 Its impossible to say how much time youll need to spend generating links but you can be sure itll be a while no matter which method of link generation you use. You just have to keep at it until you have achieved a high ranking. Even then youll still need to dedicate some ongoing time to the task otherwise your ranking will drop. Is it possible to generate links too fast Yes its possible. But using the methods outlined above its extremely unlikely. The search engines dont like
to see links generated too fast. For instance if you had 100 links to your site yesterday but you have 2100 today the search engines will assume youve done something a little shady and sandbox your links i.e. delay their full impact until it establishes their validity. You may even be penalized more harshly rankmaniac 2012 than this. Thats why its not a good idea to set up multiple independent websites all containing dozens of links back to your main site. This would get you lots of links very quickly but it might also see you blacklisted Paying an rankmaniac 2012 SEO company to generate links for you Generating links takes a long time and involves a lot of work. Like any other form of promotion it requires investment either in time or money. If rankmaniac 2012 you decide to outsource the task of generating rankmaniac 2012 links be careful. There are some companies which generate links to a domain of their own and pass the value of these links on to your site. This does NOT result in a permanent rankmaniac 2012 increase in the ranking of your site. These companies charge a monthly fee and so long as you pay the fee your site may rankmaniac 2012 rank highly. But as soon as you stop paying their fee e.g. you find another SEO company that you prefer your site's ranking will drop back to where it was when you started out. Effectively they hold you to ransom. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 35 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 35 Don't get caught out When you're researching SEO companies to generate links for you ALWAYS ask them how they will do it. If they can't or won't tell you DO NOT engage them. If they tell you but you are unable to completely understand DO NOT engage them there are no link generation methods which are too complex for the layperson to understand when explained properly. Also always be clear in your own mind on exactly what you're paying for. Remember that there are two parts to obtaining a high ranking optimizing your site and generating links back to your site. Always get your SEO company to explain exactly which parts they will do for you and how rankmaniac 2012 they plan to do it. Chapter Summary Generally speaking the more links you have back to your site the higher your ranking will be. Some links are better than others. Dont use autolinkgeneration software Dont set up websites simply to host links to your main site Add your site to DMOZ Yahoo Directories Check where your competitors links are coming from Write and submit articles for Internet publication Submit your site to local and industry directories Look for link partners rankmaniac 2012 but dont spend too much time on it Link generation takes a long time no matter how you do it SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 36 Step 6 Monitor your progress 36 Step 6 Monitor your progress Now that youve done the lions share of the hard work you can sit back and observe the results of your handiwork. Its very important that you monitor your progress. Keep an eye on how many links youre generating where theyre coming from and the overall impact on your ranking. Monitor how many links youre generating Its important to monitor how many links youre generating because you can crossreference that information against improvements in ranking to estimate how much effort your SEO push is going to take. e.g. If you generate 300 links and your site goes from number 150 to number 15 you know that you should be topping the rankings before too long. If on the other hand your ranking has only marginally increased you know you need to work a lot harder. You can monitor how many links youre generating in a number of ways Search Google for www.yourdomainname.com. Google will then display a screen which says Google can show you the following information for this URL At the bottom rankmaniac 2012 rankmaniac 2012 of the list of option is Find web pages that contain the term www.yourdomainname.com. Click on this option. Google will display all the pages it can find that have www.yourdomainname.com on one of their pages. Normally this indicates a link to your site. TIP Bookmark the search results page so you can perform this search quickly and easily as you will probably find yourself doing it quite often. Go to httpwww.marketleap.compublinkpop and type in your domain name. This tool itemizes your links by search engine i.e. tells you how
many links each search engine has found and also provides graphical trends. Go to httpwww.alexa.com and type in your domain name then click Sites Linking in from the left of the page. TIP Alexa can also be used to rankmaniac 2012 track your ranking metrics. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 37 Step rankmaniac 2012 6 Monitor your progress 37 TIP Youll notice that each of these tools return different figures. Dont worry about this. Just pick a tool and stick with it this way youre always comparing apples with apples. Monitor rankmaniac 2012 whos linking to your site Always keep track of whos linking to your site. Apart rankmaniac 2012 from simply being interesting it will give you some idea of who is interested in your site and your material you can assess their importance PR and also more accurately target their needs with future link generation tactics. Probably the easiest way to rankmaniac 2012 track whos linking to your site is to set up a Google Monitor at httpwww.google.comalerts. Google alerts notify you when your URL has been published on a web page. Google doesn't pick them rankmaniac 2012 all up but it picks up a lot. TIP Whenever you receive an alert you can visit the page to make sure the article in unchanged
rankmaniac 2012 and the link back to your site is functioning. Monitor your ranking Obviously you should be monitoring your ranking to ensure that rankmaniac 2012 your hard work is not wasted and to adapt your SEO and link generation strategy as needed. Manually You can check your ranking manually simply by doing a search for your keyword at the appropriate search engine. TIP If you prefer to check manually make sure you rankmaniac 2012 bookmark the search results page as youll probably find yourself performing this search fairly frequently. Dont perform it too frequently though as this can impact the perceived desirability of your keywords and it is argued that Google takes exception to repeated searches of this type. Automatically You can check all the major search engines AOL Google HotBot MSN Netscape YahooFastAltaVista at once rankmaniac 2012 using MarketLeaps verification tool httpwww.marketleap.comverifydefault.htm. NOTE This tool returns a page number e.g. it will tell you your site appears on page 2 of Yahoo. There are plenty of other tools out there that you can use to monitor your ranking such as rankmaniac 2012 CleverStats Free Monitor rankmaniac 2012 for Google see httpwww.cleverstat.comgooglemonitor query.htm. Shop around until you find the tool that suits you best. The important thing to SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 38 Step 6 Monitor your progress 38 remember is that you dont have to pay anything for a rank monitoring tool as rankmaniac 2012 there are plenty of free ones on offer. Chapter Summary Monitor how many links you have and crossreference that information against improvements in ranking to estimate how much effort your SEO push is going to take. Monitor who is linking to your site to more accurately adapt future link generation tactics. Monitor your ranking and adapt your SEO and link generation strategy as needed. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine rankmaniac 2012 Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 39 Conclusion 39 Conclusion Search Engine Optimization is not a black art its a science. There are defined rules and proven methodologies. And although theres a lot more to it than can be contained in a book of this size you shouldnt need any more than
what youve just read to obtain a high ranking in the search engines. But theres no denying that its hard work and takes a long time. Whatever you do dont rankmaniac 2012 rush into it. Make sure you understand the fundamentals then take some time to plan your approach. In other words SEO strategy must be part of your marketing plan alongside traditional promotional activities such as print radio and TV. Just as importantly it must be part of your marketing budget. Dont fall into the trap of thinking that the search engines are free advertising. Theyre rankmaniac 2012 not Companies like Google and Yahoo may not accept payment for a high ranking but that doesnt mean it comes for free. Someone has to do the work to get you there. Whether you spend the time to do it yourself or you engage an expert to do it for you SEO requires a seriou