p.28. but most are of questionable value. There are several reasons for this 1. Most directories are unrelated to the subject material of your website and remember ideal links come from related websites. 2. Many directories will charge you for a listing its only worth paying rankmaniac 2012 if the website is related and has a high PR. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write rankmaniac 2012 Copywriting Pty Ltd 33 Step 5 Generate links back to your site 33 3. Most directories contain thousands of links. Every page can have hundreds of links to other sites. As mentioned above its best if your link appears on a page with few if any links to other pages. 4. Most directories are not very good. Directories are about money they either charge you to add a listing or they sell advertising space or both. They can be a great income source for their owners and this makes them a very inviting business idea. As a result thousands of new directories are popping up every year and very few of them are any good. Keep your eye out for directories that are relevant andor have a high ranking or PR. Also keep your eye out for directories which might bring you useful traffic e.g. local business directories. But dont spend too much time doing it. Your time would be far better spent writing and submitting articles. TIP If you really feel the need to add your site to directories take a look at httpwww.webproworld.comviewtopic.phpt21900sidaea99f48670ee336f2b922 c79983e394 for a very comprehensive and regularly updated list of directories that accept links. Look for link partners Probably the most well known method of generating links rankmaniac 2012 is to look for link partners. This is done in a variety of ways ask customers to link to your site possibly in return for a link to theirs ask suppliers to link to your site possibly in return for a link to theirs look for relevant high ranking sites and ask them to link to you rankmaniac 2012 possibly in return for a link to theirs buy SEO software rankmaniac 2012 which locates high ranking sites and automatically emails their owners asking them to link to you possibly in return for a link rankmaniac 2012 to theirs Interestingly looking for link partners tends to be the least effective method of increasing your search engine ranking because 1. Its normally done via email and unfortunately webmasters of high ranking sites receive many link partner requests each day not to mention hundreds of other SPAM emails. Theyre normally automated and irrelevant. As a result most email initiated link partner requests are deleted. 2. Most link partner requests are sent by webmasters of rankmaniac 2012 low PR sites to webmasters of high PR sites. Although the link would be very beneficial to the low PR site it wouldnt help the high PR site at all and may in fact hinder their ranking. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 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 rankmaniac 2012 hundreds of links relevant or not they dont want to look like a directory to their customers. TIP If you rankmaniac 2012 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. rankmaniac 2012 It gives all sites a mark out of 10. Any site with a PR of 4 or above is 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 Its impossible to say how much time youll need to spend generating links but you can be sure itll be a rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 than this. Thats why its not a good idea to set up multiple independent websites rankmaniac 2012 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 SEO company to generate links for you Generating links takes a long time rankmaniac 2012 and involves a lot of work. Like any other form of promotion it requires investment either in time or money. rankmaniac 2012 If you decide to outsource the task of generating 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 increase in the ranking of your site. These companies charge a monthly fee and so long as rankmaniac 2012 you pay the fee your site may rank rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 exactly which parts rankmaniac 2012 they will do for you and how 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 rankmaniac 2012 of ways Search Google for www.yourdomainname.com. Google will then
display a screen which says rankmaniac 2012 Google can show you the following information for this URL At the bottom 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 rankmaniac 2012 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 track your ranking metrics. SEO Secrets V1.3 Copyright Divine Write Copywriting Pty Ltd 37 Step 6 Monitor your progress 37 TIP Youll notice that each of these tools return different figures. rankmaniac 2012 Dont worry about this. Just pick a tool and stick with it this way youre always comparing apples with apples. Monitor whos linking to your site Always keep track of whos linking to your site. rankmaniac 2012 Apart from simply being interesting it will give you some idea of who is interested in your site and your material rankmaniac 2012 you can assess their importance PR and also more accurately target their needs with future link generation tactics. Probably the easiest way to 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 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 and the link back to your site is functioning. Monitor your ranking Obviously you should be monitoring your ranking to ensure that your hard