Link Building Choosing The Good Links

Choosing the links:
It is just as important to have links as it is to have good links. Avoid submitting to "free for all links" and links contained from cgi-scripted programs where the link or page url has a ? in the field. Most search engines will miss it. They are getting better at spidering dynamic pages but most simply cannot parse the url. Check the Page Rank in the Google toolbar to see if the site in question is even listed in Google. If it has a PR 0 leave it alone and search for your next link. Never link to free for all link pages, link farms or Page Rank 0 Home Page websites. Search engines will find you guilty if you link to PR 0 (Page Rank Zero No Green in the Google toolbar on the websites homepage) sites, this can hurt your ranking and even ban you from a search engine. Those will not help you as much since most major search engines ignore them.

Spend the extra time to get links that are related to your site. If you do not have the time you should hire an SEO Company that offers Link Popularity services to do it for you. We average 15 to 20 minutes per link and find we usually have to ask more than once. The most important links are on top ranking pages that are ranking in the same keywords that you want to rank with. Yes, that makes you competitive and less likely to get a link from those sites. Well you should note that the reason they rank is because of their content and their incoming links from other sites. You can target their links by searching for incoming links to those sites that do not offer reciprocal links. For example go to Google and type in "link:www.Your_Competition.com" see where the higher ranking links are coming from and try and contact those webmasters. You will find many willing to trade links or even add you without a reciprocal link, although we suggest you return the favor. This is an ongoing process, it literally takes months to track down good keyword relevant sites to link with.

Types of links:
Text links with your keywords in them are the best way to link to your site. So if the title of your site, your meta tags, the body of your page text all have the same keyword as the link text your results will be better. This is the "Google Bomb" effect that when hundreds of pages link to your website with a specific keyword in the link text the ranking is considered to be the best. However you must get these on many sites with both similar and different content from your own. The higher the Page Rank (Green stuff in the Google toolbar) is on site that you trade with ranks, the better the links value is to you. If it is a similar category web site the link is worth much more to you. But remember that the page your link will be on must have value. Avoid Directories on companies websites that have numerous links in a web directory. 90% of those links do not work. Avoid linking to sites that use a Link directory from any of the Link Popularity Programs and Linking Manager styled directories. 90% of those links do not work.

Submission service = more links?:
This topic has been used to be debated by many SEO companies for quite some time. From our experience it is not the submission at all that matters it is the optimization and real links. We believe any submission service IS ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS! Some just submit your website every few months to spiders that have already spidered your website. Submission to Search Engine is almost unnecessary. Think about it. A good search engine wants to find every page of every website to make it the largest search engine. A good search engine wants to have Fresh Up-To-Date content.

Many submission services add you to artificial link pages that are hosted on their own sites. These links are submitted and remain on the page for about 2 days if they ever made it. We went to one of the biggest Submission companies online and looked at where they placed your websites. 20% of the sites didn't even exist. 10% were free for all pages. Most wouldn't help any site. The ones they offer for free are all you would really need.

Try and avoid these submission services like the plague. Remember the better Search Engines want to be considered an asset to the public and will want as many sites indexed as humanely or mechanically possible. They are constantly sending out spiders to find new pages and archive them. Your site is better off not being submitted, but rather being found by reciprocal links. Your site will rank better and higher. All you need is several strategic links to your site and it will get indexed in all the major search engines. Keep in mind that there are certain sites that are better to be listed in than some of the smaller search engines.

Directories such as Yahoo and DMOZ should be submitted to. They have Human Editors and the value of these authority domains is helpful in overall website ranking. This helps get rid of spam and abuse of the mechanical engines. Major search engines place more importance on sites that are listed in these kind of directories and ranks them higher. Dmoz.org (The Open Directory Project) can also generate you more links as hundreds of small search portals use their listings. Unfortunately they are out of date and list old nonexistent sites or much older versions of any given website.

SEO Image, Inc. recommends you search far and wide for the best links you can find and try and approach the Webmaster to arrange for a reciprocal link. Spend more time worrying about high quality targeted links rather than submissions to as many pages as possible. With a good combination of targeted link popularity, optimized content, title and meta tags, you will be well on your way to reaching the top position on the search engines.

About the Author: Alan Rabinowitz is the CEO of a prominent NYC SEO Company, SEO Image. Visit SEO Image for more information on Search Engine Optimization, Internet Marketing and Link Building.

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About the Author: Alan Rabinowitz is the CEO of a prominent NYC <a href="http://www.seoimage.com/">SEO Company</a>, SEO Image. Visit SEO Image for more information on <a href="http://www.seoimage.com/search-engine-optimization.html">Search Engine Optimization</a>, Internet Marketing and Link Building. http://www.seoimage.com/

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