Where Can I Get Good One Way Links?

One way links are very important to a website. Getting them isn't as easy as getting reciprocal links, but as this article explains it's worth persevering.

When another website links to yours without you linking back to them in return, it instantly strengthens the position of your site in the search engines. This is because the site which links to yours is getting nothing back in return.

While reciprocal links are easier to get, they are nowhere near as powerful as one way links coming in to your website. It's possible to buy one way links but this isn't recommended as some search engines don't approve of the practice. What you need to do is start looking at ways to generate one way links that you can do for free.

One of the best ways to create lots of one way links leading back to your website is to write articles and submit them to some of the myriad of article directories available online. Every article can contain a link back to your website in the resource box, and some of these articles will get picked up to use on other websites and in email newsletters - which increases the popularity of those links.

You should also be selective in which article directories you post your articles to. If you stick with the most popular ones which have the highest PageRank, the links you are cultivating will be worth even more.

Another good way of generating more one way links is by using a signature wherever you can that leads back to your site. Most forums will allow you to link back to your website at the foot of every post you make; just make sure you check the individual rules of each one to ensure it is allowed.

Perhaps the best way to generate one way links is by providing the best quality website you can manage. As your traffic builds and your reputation grows, other webmasters will naturally want to draw attention to you by telling their visitors about your site and linking back to it without even being asked.

If you use all three of these methods you can begin to create good quality one way links within days - sometimes even hours - and over time they will continue to grow, all contributing to your site being able to achieve a higher PageRank in the process.

Can Some Links Hurt My Rankings?

Find out which links you should be steering clear of when promoting your website. Not all links are beneficial.

The short answer to this is yes. You should always be aware of the kind of links you are using, and perhaps more importantly the sites you are linking to or from.

And it's not just the type of links you use - the number you've got can be a problem too.

Let's say you create a brand new website. Naturally you want to get it up and running as quickly as possible and impress the search engines with how comprehensive your site is. So you start piling on the links - writing articles, calling in favours from other webmasters you know and linking back to your site in other ways too, all to make sure your site gets found and indexed in double quick time.

The problem is that if a search engine sees lots of links appearing all in one hit, they can deem that to be spam (rightly or wrongly) and ban your site as a result. So the message is definitely to build your links gradually over time as opposed to trying to get started too quickly.

It has also been said several times that Google has a habit of frowning on you for selling paid links on your site. They can penalise you for this so steer clear of trying to increase your revenue from your links in this way. While the waters concerning how or when they might penalize you are muddy, it's much better to rely on gaining quality links from sites that are linking to you because they like your content and they think your site is worthwhile.

Gaining inbound links is one of the best ways to strengthen your site and increase your Page Rank, but how you do it is paramount to how successful you eventually are.

To this end, make absolutely sure you steer well clear of link farms. These are websites that contain hundreds if not thousands of links to other sites on the web? and that's it. They exist for no other purpose, and thus have very little value. If you list your site with one or more link farms in the hope of getting more traffic, you won't be helping your rankings at all.

By way of a footnote, be aware of the phrase link baiting. It sounds awful and certainly something to be avoided, but in actual fact it isn't. When link baiting is done properly it can do your site a lot of good. Think of it as viral link building, where you encourage others to link back to your site. You must have a good reason to ask them to do so though.

How Do I Convince Webmasters To Link To My Site?

The more good quality links you can get coming back to your site the better, but persuading other webmasters to do just that isn't as easy as it might sound.

This can be tricky, but the key word to remember here is value. Reciprocal links are far easier to achieve - you link to their site if they will link to yours - but one way links from other sites are far more powerful in the long run.

Getting plenty of one way links takes time and effort but it does pay off, and it doesn't always boil down to having to ask a webmaster to include your link and offering them nothing in return. It's quite possible to generate one way links and do the webmaster a favor as well - you just have to do a spot of lateral thinking to achieve it.

Here's an example to illustrate the point. What do all webmasters need? What are they constantly on the look out for that makes their day when they find it?

The short answer is unique content.

Do some research and create a list of websites that concentrate on the same subject as your own site. Remember that links are worth more when they are relevant.

Get in touch with each webmaster and offer them a unique article, not published anywhere else, which they are free to publish on their own site provided they place a link at the bottom of it that leads back to your website. You may not get a reply from everyone, but most webmasters will jump at the chance of some free and unique content, because it will help their own positioning in the search engines. It's a win win situation. Make sure you mention that the article can be keyworded to attract even more traffic.

Many websites also have a page or section containing links to other recommended sites. There is always the possibility of having your link added here, but this will usually involve having to email the webmaster so make doubly sure you get all the details spot on.

Finally there is the question of value. Sometimes you don't have to ask for links - all you have to do is build a site that establishes itself as one of the best ones on the subject. If your own PageRank increases and is better than that of many other competing sites they will naturally want to link to yours to help improve their own PageRank.

Ultimately it's a question of combining more than one technique to get a good number of one way links leading back to your site over time. This isn't a strategy to be rushed - devoting some time to it will help ensure you get good results in the end.

How Much Keyword Density Is Too Much?

Keyword density is very important when you are creating content for your web pages. But if you include too many keywords you run the risk of being accused of keyword spamming. So how much is overdoing it?

The term keyword density refers to the number of times a specific keyword is used within a body of text on a web page. It is usually referred to as a percentage, which is calculated by dividing the number of times the keyword appears on the page by the total number of words in the piece. That figure is then multiplied by a hundred to get the total percentage.

But what percentage should you be aiming for? We know that if your percentage is too high you are venturing into keyword spamming territory, but if it's too low you won't achieve any decent results at all.

So how high can you - and should you - go?

Unfortunately this is one subject on which everyone has a different opinion. Figures of anywhere between 2% and an unbelievable 50% have been bandied about online, but as a general rule it's advisable not to go above around 3% or 4%.

A good rule of thumb to follow is to see how well your content flows when you use a certain keyword density. The more times you use your keyword the less impressive your writing will be. This is because you will have to start manipulating the text in order to fit the keywords in more and more often.

Your copy should always flow well and be readable and useful to anyone who reads it. As always, all the best SEO techniques remember that the website visitors are very much the priority, and while they are also designed to please the search engines it is the visitors who remain the most important asset.

As soon as you start playing around with your content purely to fit more keywords in, you are losing track of that fact, and you will start to run the risk of overdoing it with your keyword density.

Why SEO Matters

Should you really be concerned about SEO? If you want a website that receives plenty of traffic the answer is yes - read on to find out why.

If you look up the term ?search engine optimization' on Google (without the quote marks) you'll get over sixty million results in return.

Search engine optimization is big business online, and if you have your own website you need to be delving into some of the vast amount of information available online.

But why does SEO matter so much? What makes it the number one activity you should be doing at all times to help promote your website?

Search engine optimization is the process of designing your website so it can be easily found via the search engines. Unfortunately the process itself is far easier to describe than it is to take part in, mainly because there are so many different areas of SEO to bear in mind. With terms like meta tags, long tail keywords, html tags and content development being thrown around, it's small wonder that newcomers to the webmaster role are daunted by the thought of optimizing their site.

The one big advantage of SEO is that you can tackle it bit by bit, concentrating on one area at a time and building your knowledge as you go along. Some areas are easier to get a grasp of than others, so it's probably best to leave meta tags and other html elements until you have a bit more knowledge and confidence to build on.

Search engine optimization is important because it can get you ahead of the competition. It's a fact that if two websites are very similar in style and content but one of them is optimized and the other isn't, the one that's put in the effort required to please the search engines will be the one that's getting all the traffic.

The other important thing to remember about SEO is that it's an ongoing process. There may well be a beginning, but there will never be an end. Once the bulk of the work is done you can constantly tweak and test different optimization techniques to see whether you can improve on your current rankings.

But if you think this all sounds like too much hard work, think again. While search engine optimization should always be near the top of your list of things to do, a little bit of effort on a regular basis does have the potential to pay off in a big way. If you are constantly trying out different (but legal) optimization techniques, you are by definition constantly updating your website.

This alone is a key part of SEO. Every time you update your website it has the power to attract the attention of the search engine spiders, which will pick up on the fact that something has changed and will crawl your site to investigate the improvements.

If you've had a website for a while and you had a period of time where you didn't update it at all, you will probably have noticed that your ranking will have slipped somewhat. This is because the search engines will always put fresh sites above stale ones - and that's a great incentive to start exploring the world of SEO a bit more.

Even the learning process will see your ranking start to rise.