Most websites have link pages – why? Well, there are two very important reasons why web developers should think about link sites.

1. Search engine optimization or SEO is just one way for search engines to know you’re there. Another thing that you shouldn’t neglect if you want your website to get noticed is getting links.

2. Your website provides a service to your visitors – links provide them with other interesting websites to visit. While the retail industry may say they want people to stay on their site rather than go elsewhere, carefully chosen links could increase people’s interest in the products you sell! You may need to think outside the box!

In the eyes of search engines, there must be good and bad links. Good links will take you up the page rank and to the top of the list, bad links will be ignored at best and could actually work against you, and your site will rank much lower.

– Good links are links from sites that are highly relevant to your site and have a good page rank.

– A bad link belongs to a set of obvious links and has no contextual link to your site.

Before we continue, let’s talk a little bit about page rank. Page Rank is the ranking that Google assigns to the pages of a website, indicating their importance as Google sees them. The Google Toolbar, which is available for free at http://toolbar.google.com, is a useful tool as it shows the page rank of each webpage you visit. Page Rank (or PR) of a page ranges from 0 to 10 – 0 is a start, 10 would be great! Even though Google keeps the homework algorithm very top secret, progression is possible through the numbers on a logarithmic scale – meaning a page’s ranking of 2 is many times more important than that of 1, not just 1 point.

When creating links, you should try to get links to your site from sites with a higher page rank than yours. Links from sites with good PR will quickly signal to search engines that your site is worth indexing! The more links the better!, So should you only link to higher PR pages? Well, if everyone practiced this, the chances of you getting a link for your embryonic website would be nil! A site could be 0 today, but so could this site

Work hard to improve their ranking and you can benefit from their progress. Also think about your human visitors, a website can be useful for them even if it is not useful for your goal of improving your ranking! So the golden rule to remember:

– Aims to get links from high ranking sites

– Publish links from any site that is highly relevant to your site.

First think of a website that will be useful for your visitors to get them to leave your site. For example, if you are a specialty website, are there national organizations that promote your sport, hobby or industry? Your first step is to email these organizations and ask if you can build a mutual relationship with them.

It’s probably a bit of a David and Goliath situation right now, and a lot of people are disappointed because they think their new, immature side is too small. You may not get a reply to your emails, you may get replies that you down, but you may find national organizations with good page rankings that will agree to link to you! Very happy with it!, Once someone agrees to have a reciprocal link with you, post their link on your site – just in case they decide to check it out!

Now think again about your customers or visitors – even if a large organization has refused to link to their website, it can still be useful to link them to your website for your visitor information. Always remember that the whole purpose of getting website traffic is to attract and keep loyal customers or visitors – not just to attract search engine bots!, Now the hard work begins. Search the web for sites on the same subject as yours, but definitely NOT competitors. Keep an eye on the Google Toolbar and look for sites that have a better page rank than yours – ideally, the site you are looking for will rank around 4 or 5 (higher ranked sites can be a bit presumptuous towards newcomers).

What about the people who provide you with goods and services – can they link to yours? What about customers? Try to think outside the box here – if you have a sports site, how about links to local photographers?. Sometimes it’s also good to research away from the computer (yes, sometimes you can turn it off!). Trade journals are often a good place to start – write to any email address and ask for a return link. Even if they don’t have a links page yet, you might find that they decide to add one! It never hurts to ask!

When viewing websites, check if they have a links page. If this is the case, you may find a form to submit details about your site asking to be added to their links page or suggestion page. Add a new link button so you can easily add your website. You may need to email the site if it doesn’t seem to be checking for a link. Don’t be too put off if there aren’t any relevant categories to list your site in – you can always add more categories. If you don’t ask, you get nothing! If you ask – you might succeed!

So don’t worry about writing emails asking for a reciprocal link – but make sure you include the promised link! This might make you think a little about your site – some people don’t want their links to be at the bottom of very long pages. You should consider rotating the banner so you can show more links but keep the page simple. You also need to restrict irrelevant links.

If you know your topic, show it! And one of the best ways is to join forums. When posting or replying to a topic on forums, always use a signature with your website address on it – if forum users like what they read about you, they’ll click ljnk to visit your site and hey presto – you’ll have more links to yours site! If your hosting company has a user forum, there might be an area where you can showcase your new website – if so, you’ll get a lot of traffic from it. Great links for search engines and bait for link spiders!

In addition, if you visit the guest book of the page in question, you can leave your website address there as well. ONLY IF THIS PAGE IS RELEVANT PLEASE!. Articles don’t have to be long – actually, shorter is better. Probably no more than 600 to 1000 words. In your article you want to write about something related to your website.

There are now a number of websites that will publish your articles for you. Other websites are free to use your article, but they MUST include author details – which of course means your website details. People using your article will form links to your site – the more different sites use it, the better the link!

Better yet, you can submit your articles to a number of article sites. Ezine article is one of the biggest, but any search on Google will uncover several others.

Well, no one can pretend this is an easy activity – it takes time. Nobody will use your article unless it is well thought out and tells them something new. Certainly not boring either. However, submitting articles is a very good way to improve your website’s position in search engines and should not be overlooked.

Of course, articles are an important resource for webmasters in another way too – free content for your website! There are websites that deal with an incredible number of topics and on their own they can be very useful and informative! For example, free web design articles can give you more hints and tips on how to get the most out of your website.

If you use an article, you must include the author’s full biography and a link back to their website. But the benefit to you is pre-packaged content that will hopefully be keyword rich and will attract search engine bots like honey bees!

Web rings are another way to build links – again, check the page rank of the web ring you’re joining. Web rings provide you with links and offer your human visitors other interesting websites that they might want to visit.

Let’s face it – website design and publishing is actually a much more difficult task than you might first think when you start designing your homepage. But nothing is more demoralizing than designing an amazing website that you are so proud of – only to find out you have no visitors at all!

You might want to spend all your time perfecting existing pages and installing new ones, and anything that gets in your way is hated, but if you want to build a successful website, link building is something you must do. .

It is best to plan one day per week for your marketing activities. Link building, along with SEO, is a very tedious activity. Incorporate SEO into the way you build your site from scratch (or in other words, not only consider human eye impact when designing your site, but consider spiders and bots at the same time!) . And use your day of the week to build links.A tip from experienced developers in this field is not to target hundreds of links in a short time – this makes search engines suspicious again. Instead, just try to get a quality link at least once a month.

Website marketing isn’t a sprint, it’s more of a marathon. Many will enter the race, but many will fall by the wayside. But if you admit it’s going to be hard work, and keep working hard, you’ll make it in the end. There will come a time when you will receive requests from reputable and well-rated sites requesting a reciprocal link from you! It may not be the end yet, but rest assured that it will delight you and you will know that most of your hard work has paid off!