Website Marketing Resource

An Introduction to Link Exchange

Initially, when the internet was in its infancy, webmasters used links as a way to complement the content of their website and to help their visitors find information. As the importance of links increased, the focus shifted away from helping the visitor to helping the webmaster.

This came about as a result of the Grandaddy of all search engines Google begun to implement its concept of "Page Rank" to classify websites in terms of their importance and perceived authority. Essentially Google defined links from any given website as a vote or endorsement of the site pointed to - the more significant the originating site, the more significant the endorsement. This in turn affects search engine results position as Google’s ranking algorithm gives significant weighting to this ratio.

To webmasters in search of ever more traffic, Page Rank or "PR" thus became an all important factor in choosing link partners, with the original purpose for linking getting lost in the stampede ? helping your visitors navigate the net more easily.

Linking to other websites is nonetheless critical to any site, and crucial to a new site, which will be hard pressed to find any traffic at all. There are two basic reasons that a website will seek out link partners:

Everyone wants to know the big secret to driving traffic to their website. Every day I see an article or an ad talking about driving people to your website. Driving traffic to a website has become the "holy grail" on the internet. People are realizing that ‘if you build it, they won’t come… unless you give them a reason’. Website traffic just doesn’t happen by itself. Your website is just one of many millions on the web and people rarely just stumble upon your site by accident.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. You can buy traffic from vendors that will pummel your website with hits from automated programs. This will increase your hits but will it increase your bottom line? Probably not. You can set up blogs that spider (connect to) your website increasing your traffic count. Does this drive users to your website? Only if your blog is sointeresting that people are reading it. There are thousands of blogs posted on the internet and your blog is just a needle in the internet haystack.

Web site traffic refers to the number of times your site is viewed by the users. It is the most important point to be made for the success of your online business.

Steps to increase the site traffic:

Step 1: Submit Your Site to Search Engines:

Major Search Engines:
Yahoo, Google, AOL Search, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, Direct Hit, Excite, FAST Search, HotBot, Inktomi, LookSmart, Lycos, MSN Search, Netscape Search

? Manually Submission:
If you want to submit by hand, be aware that each Search Engine has it’s own set of rules for determining relevancy and ranking.

? Paid Submission:
Where you have to pay to be listed.

Good Submission Sites:

http://submitfire.coffeecup.com/
http://www.actnowdomains.com/
http://www.submitnet.net//default
www.submitexpress.com
www.submit-it.com
www.submitshop.com
www.addme.com/submission.htm

Step 2: Update Information:
Put fresh content and update the existing content of your website.

Step 3: Pay for clicks:
Receive targeted pay per click traffic from all major search engines. People will see your site in the sponsored links section of the search results when they search for keyword phrases related to your products or services.

Major pay- per- click search engines:

? Overture- from yahoo:
http://www.content.overture.com/d/

? AdWords- from google:
https://adwords.google.com/select/

There are three main sources for you to get the content you need.

They are:

Write it Yourself
Hire a Ghostwriter
Use Other Writers

There are pros and cons to each source but by using a combination of sources you can accumulate a well-rounded body of content for your use. Here are some of the points to consider when using the different methods for creating content. What works best for you will depend on your level of writing ability, what the content will be used for and your budget, among other things.

Write it Yourself

Writing content yourself is not only the least expensive method, but allows you to inflect your personality into the content. This can be very useful in attracting a loyal customer, especially through newsletters and articles.

Writing content yourself can also be beneficial when writing about a topic of which you are particularly knowledgeable about. If you can inform your customers on a topic it may be difficult to find another writer who can impart the same information accurately.

You have to search a lot to find what is most likely to work for your web site. Once you get an understanding for each type of advertising then you can put it to work.

Website directories: Helpful for one way links to your website to increase link popularity. Do not expect a lot of clicks.

Free Classified ads: Expect what you pay for. Nothing!

Safe lists: Stay away!

Opt in email lists: Terrific! But you need traffic to build your list of opt-in subscribers?

Free Banner exchanges: You need traffic to get traffic from banner ads! In general you’ll earn one banner impression for every two you display on your page. Try banner campaigns in combination with a pop under campaign. Send that cheap traffic to a web page with original content and some banners from 2-6 free banner exchanges. Be careful: Do not create a banner "farm"! The banner exchanges will suspend your account.

If you buy banner ads on topic related websites, expect a click trough rate of 0.5%-1.5%

Search engine optimisation: A must! But have in mind that it’s a long-term strategy, costing thousands of dollars (unless you know how to do it yourself) but results are not guaranteed?

Most webmasters keep their prized web traffic generating systems to themselves or charge an arm and a leg. I am one of the guys in the trenches. Before I share with you the simplest and easiest methods to generate website traffic I will begin with a little background information.

I have several websites and in the past ten years I have worked with gurus that promised to deliver traffic to my sites. In fact I have paid from $200 to over $2,000 for traffic to my sites. I had one person that charged a reasonable fee and my traffic went from 500 visitors to 8,000 visitors. Three years later his fee wasn’t that reasonable, but I decided to go ahead and try another website. After three months and two thousand dollars I saw no results.

As many people know the search engines create algorithms so nobody can beat the system. The gurus figure a way around this and charge lots of money to drive traffic to your site. Then the dance continues and the search engines create new algorithms. Next thing you know you are going back to the guru or searching for someone new.

We will begin this topic with one assumption, that our home business comprises selling through a website. Meaning we are website owners. In which case, we may want to manage our website ourselves or hire someone to manage it for us. In either option, it is in our interest to know what goes into making our home business a success or what we are paying for to achieve success at it.

Internet is full of claims, information, advice and secrets on how to get success with home business. Some self proclaimed as well as genuine gurus are selling info packed in ebooks while some ask you to download videos and guarantee you can replicate their success. What you have to understand is that all these people are selling you the same truth?. "Increase traffic to your site". Everyone is teaching you the same skill in their own language.

This answers our basic question. The internet home business entrepreneurs should be constantly working towards getting more and more traffic to their website/websites. They may use any school of thought that suits them. Do a simple link exchange campaign or pay for links on websites with high traffic. May follow particular ebook guru’s techniques; take tips of SEO website owners?whatever. Anyhow their end goal has to be constant inflow of traffic. Increase in traffic.

So we gather in all the relevant information we can possibly find, and include it in all the right places, taking great care in linking our pages properly, optimise each page in turn with a list of ‘keywords’ - and making sure that the most relevant keywords are reflected in each pages ‘title tags’..

After having done everything we can possibly think of ‘at home’, - we become aware of the importance of having ‘inbound links’ from other websites, especially from ones of a similar nature to our own little masterpiece, - how a multitude of other sites referring to our site can ultimately make our site look more important to a search engines ’spider’, and therefore gain in stature within the index of the search engine and move closer to the top of the list of results presented.

At this point we’ll probably come to the conclusion, that the least time consuming way to achieve these ‘inbound links’ is by joining one of the many links exchange programs available on the internet, - such as LinkMarket or InfoWizards ? to find other like-minded souls, who are also looking for fresh links into their websites.

Getting Traffic or more precisely Targeted Traffic to your website is the most important strategy for the Survival and Success of your Internet Home Based Business. It is a well known fact that the vast majority of the new Home Business Entrepreneurs have only a small marketing budget. Not that they are all short of funds but it takes time for them to be convinced about spending money. It is their desire and determination to cash in on the vast potential the Internet offers that has thrust them into this field of activity.

Follow these free, reliable methods and get the Traffic you desperately need to get noticed in the Internet. Some methods are time consuming and laborious but when money is the critical factor, time and labor should not be of major concern.

1. Reciprocal Linking.
Reciprocal linking is one of the most popular ways to get traffic to your Home Based Business site and also boost your rankings in the search engines. The strategy you should follow is: (a) Go to search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN and identify the websites that are similar or relevant to yours with high page ranks. (b)Eliminate those that are in direct competition to you. (c) Persuade and convince the webmasters to exchange links with you. (d) Identify quality websites i.e. websites with PR3 and over that have high traffic and exchange links with them.

Track all sources of traffic generation.

John Reese stresses the need to track where all traffic comes from and at what cost. It is crucial to know exactly how many sales, newsletter sign-ups, or other leads your particular marketing campaigns generating. This enables you to work smarter and not harder. By tracking all traffic to your site you can make twice as much while working fifty percent less.

Content is King

On the internet, people are searching for one thing……. Content! Load your website with as much content as possible. Then, continuously add content. Search engines love information and they will love your site if you’ve got lots of it. There’s plenty of free content for the taking on the internet. You can load up your site with articles from article directories like ezinearticles.com. Or, you could be like John and use content from the public domain. Or, you can use content that is in the creative commons. This type is now easier than ever to find now that Yahoo and others have come out with a search engine designed specifically for content that is in the creative commons.