Link popularity improvement tutorial by Maarten Van Ruitenburg

Link popularity improvement tutorial by Maarten Van Ruitenburg

Introduction:

Improving your link popularity is a big part of optimizing your website for search engines. Many webmasters ignore this very rewarding process. The most common reason for this is the time it takes. Many webmasters just dont have the time. There are services out there that will do this for you, but if you have the time to do this yourself, I highly recommend you to do this! Please take some time to read through this article and learn how you can get the most out of improving your link popularity in a short amount of time.

What not to do:

One thing that is very important is the quality of the links that link to your website. Links pointing to your from a low ranking, low traffic and unrelated website are very close to pointless. Before we go through he few steps to building a quality link directory, there are a few things you need to know not to do:

- Do not add your link to a large link list that many webmasters upload to their website and consist of links only. This is considered a link farm. Important search engines like Google recognize these links pages as link farms and will not count these as incoming links. In fact it could hurt your rankings. Some other search engines are know for banning your websites if you participate in one of these link farms.

- Do not create a link directory and use this directory for multiple websites. Not only does this get close to being a link farm, it also creates a links nest. It is very easy for search engine spiders to recignize that all these pages are the same.

- Do not use Zeus for creating your links pages. Google does not spider links pages created by this program which makes it pointless.

- Do not decide whether you will link to a website just because of its Google Page Rank. If it is a nice professional website, and it is a good resource for your visitors, you should definatley link to it!

8 Steps to improving your link popularity successfully:

1. To make the process of searching for links and building your link directory easier and time saving, we recommend using Arelis (Axandras Reciprocal Link Solution) . This award winning program will search for potential link partners and also create your link directories however you like them. The link directory pages are fully customizable to match the looks of your website. It will also help you sending out emails to webmasters to ask them to trade links.

2. To evaluate each potential link partner website we recommend using the Google toolbar as well as the Alexa toolbar. These toolbars will help you evaluate each website you visit. The Google toolbar will tell you the page rank of the website you are visiting (although you should not entirely base your results on this!) and the Alexa toolbar will tell you what kind of traffic rankings the potential link partner has. There is no sense requesting a link exchange with a low traffic website. If it hardly gets any visitors itself, how many will you receive from it? By finding out the page rank you will know how much value Google will put into that link. A page rank over 4/10 will affect your rankings. But also keep in mind that a page with a Page Rank of 1 can be a PR4 next month!

3. As you visit each website, you will also visit many search directories. As you visit these directories dont forget to leave your link. You dont have to link back to these sites. Many of these directories will not just help increasing your link popularity, you can also receive some substantially good traffic from these!

4. Make sure each potential link partner already has a link directory on their website, or even better displays links on the sides or bottom of its website.

5. When you have found about 25-30 potential link partners, create your link directory. If you are using Arelis, there is plenty information on how you can create your links pages matching your website. Make sure you have a link from your main page pointing to your link directory. This will help search engine spiders spider your links pages.

6. You have created a nice looking link directory. Now it is time to start contacting webmasters to request a link exchange. You can use templates to do this. But this is not reccomended. You want to make sure that you personalize each and every single link request you send out. These days, webmasters get too many junk emails. Personalizing your link request will give you a bigger chance to get response from the webmaster you are contacting. Dont forget to add something nice to your email. Also, include your linking information to your website for them to add to theirs. Make it as easy for them as possible. Give them a reason to add your link to their site. Dont start off your request by telling this webmaster telling him how important link popularity is. They should know. And if they don't, they probably don't have a link directory.

7. It might take some webmasters some time to respond to your request. Dont make them angry by keep sending them emails. Send one, if you dont get an answer for a month or so you can send another request. Not all webmasters will respond at all. But if you keep your email requests personalized, professional and friendly, your should be getting about an 70%-80% response.

8. As time goes by, keep working on your link directory. A few hours per week will get you a long way. You will be seeing result after about 1-2 months. The traffic to your site will increase. Your search engine rankings will get higher.
Follow each of these steps carefully. Link popularity is so important. But dont think that you will get high rankings just by increasing your link popularity. You also want to make sure your web pages are search engine friendly. You can get someone to optimize your website for you, or you can use a program such as IBP (Internet Business Promotor) and WebCEO

About the Author
Maarten Van Ruitenburg has been designing, developing and marketing websites since 1998. Visit his website at www.visualdevelopments.com