Off-Page Optimization

     As you have hopefully discovered from this course, search engines pay attention to numerous factors before giving it a high ranking and generating significant traffic.

     When trying to reach top search engine positions it’s a must to take care of the off-page data the spiders are able to collect about your pages. Generally, page presence in directories, link popularity and keyword theme affects position more than all the on-page factors put together. Building good link popularity for your Web pages is a technique that is sure to win.

     Nowadays, good link popularity is the core element of the "off-page" factors. Your work with links MUST constitute a key part of your Search Marketing strategy. We recommend that you spend 50% of your time working on website optimization efforts towards building high quality link popularity.

     Remember that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a website, the more popular the website and therefore the higher quality resource for search engines. Our next lessons clearly explain everything about links and their quality. Link building strategies and techniques are also profoundly depicted herein to help you raise Web page link popularity.

     Please note that quality of the websites linking to you overrides the quantity. Thus it is better to have a few quality sites linking to your site unlike a few hundreds of spammy sites or link farms. The use of link farms (Web sites set up with the sole purpose of increasing the link popularity of other sites by increasing the number of incomming links to those sites. They are typically made up of long lists of unrelated links. Some link farms are created as networks of sites that contain numerous links to one another) is frowned upon by search engines and will only succeed in getting your site banned or penalized. The best quality links come from high ranking pages and those that have some relation to your own site.

     Building links can be time consuming, frustrating and sometimes ending up with little or no results. But this is unavoidable if we wish to establish PageRanks; we must build links. There are additional link sources and content distribution techniques to get links. In later lessons we tell you how to do this with the help of article/press release marketing.

     When properly applied blogs, forums and RSS feeds can also raise the amount of traffic to your website and assist in acquiring inbound links.

What you should remember:

     1. Websites with high link popularity are better quality resources for search engines. The greater number of links from other sites pointing to your site the greater its SE popularity

Link Marketing 

     Hyperlinks, or “links” as they are commonly known, are pathways from one website to another. The Internet was built on this series of interconnections between sites. Links are seen on virtually every page on the Internet, and when clicked by the mouse they bring the Internet surfer to another page, either on the same website, or to another website.

     A link from your page at “mypage.htm” pointing to another page on another website or domain is called an outgoing or – to be more precise – an outbound link; the link leads out of your page. When you link to another page of your own site, this link is outbound too, relative to the page on which it is placed.

     Alternatively, when a page out in the Web or within your website links to your "mypage.htm", this link is incoming, or inbound link , for "mypage".

     A “reciprocal” or “backwards” link contains both inbound and outbound links to the same two websites.

     Links are important for helping human users find interesting, informative and useful content on the Internet, and they have special value to search engines like Google and Yahoo!. Search engines consider the number of links, age of link, and link quality when applying ranking algorithms to pages. They follow a simple logic: the more incoming links a Web page receives, the more other pages and websites have cast their "votes" for this Web page by considering it an interesting resource. Thus, this page should be ranked higher.

     Remember that search engines rank pages, not sites. Thus, if the home page of our demo site promoting weather forecasting software is not considered interesting by other webmasters it will have few inbound links to it from other sites. On the other hand, a page on the same site about horoscopes contains interesting horoscope facts and has many inbound links from other sites.

     Fortunately, this is not the case for our weather forecasting software site and all pages have good link popularity. But if this was the case, our horoscopes page would not rank much higher than our home page, primarily on Google, notwithstanding that we optimized both pages equally well. Encountering a similar situation, webmasters and optimizers with little experience start guessing what the problem is; the experts check their link popularity as this is often the primary clue to the problem.

     While link quantity is important, quality is even more important. Search engine algorithms are intentionally built to give inbound links more value than others. Simple links are not given the same weight as links with the following advantages: 

· Links from pages deemed to be more relevant, in terms of topic and theme;

· Links labeled with more keyword rich anchor text and surrounded by relevant descriptions;

· Links from pages with a higher Google PageRank;

      · Links that originate from content pages rather than from "links pages" and free-for-all link catalogs. 
   
          However, this doesn't concern the pages of Web's most popular directories DMOZ and Yahoo!, as the links from them are considered "expert".

     Inbound links are generally helpful to the site that receives the link, but there are exceptions. Luckily, it is not possibile to get your site banned or excluded from listings if you get a "bad" inbound link from a penalized website; search engines recognize that no one can control who links to their website. Some incoming links, including those from guest books, link farms and free-for-all link pages provide almost no gain in the rankings because they are generally ignored by the search engines.

     Becoming involved in any linking scheme solely designed to trick the search engines into providing higher rankings could result in a penalty or even an outright ban. All such schemes should be avoided.

     The concept of Link Popularity refers to the number and quality of links inbound to your website pages - the higher the number of links pointing to your page, the higher your link popularity. However, the number itself is not the only factor that determines your site's importance. The other related factor that determines your site's importance is Link Quality.

     Link quality may be defined as the quality of content in the sites that are linked to yours, as well as the industry relevance to your site. The link anchor text (the actual text of the hyperlink visible to the visitors of the linking site) adds to the link quality if relevant to your content. The number of links on the linking page itself is considered vital by some search engines. The link will not be given much weight if it is placed on a page with thousands of similar links. However, if the page linking to yours has only a few links or a low link-to-content ratio, this is considered a quality link.

     Your work with links MUST constitute a key part of your Search Marketing strategy. We recommend that you spend 50% of your time working on website optimization efforts which build high quality link popularity.

What you should remember from this lesson:

      1. Nowadays, good link popularity is the core element of "off-the-page" factors and, in general, it plays a more important role than all of the “on-the-page” factors put together when it comes to high rankings in search engines.

                        2. High-quality inbound links are your main goal. High-quality links are those that come from the pages with rich content relevant to yours and with a low number of other links.

Link Popularity and Link Quality

     As we learnt in the introductory lesson, link popularity is composed from the quality and quantity of inbound links. Another concept to always keep in mind is the keyword theme, made up by all words and phrases used in the anchor texts of all links that a search engine can detect when pointing to your site from other domains. The closer your keyword theme reflects the keyword optimization profile you used when optimizing your pages, the better your SEO efforts will be. A comprehensive keyword theme is the heart of overall inbound link quality, which, in its turn, is at the core of a strong link popularity factor.

     Link popularity is one of the most influential factors for determining how well a website will perform in search engine rankings.

     In the past a Web page's ranking was determined mainly by the number of keyword occurrences within "on-page" elements like page text, META tags, title tag etc. Web developers soon learnt that they could trick a search engine and make it return their Web pages on search engine results by stuffing their pages with keywords. The search engines had to find a way to take control over the spammers. So they started to give more and more weight to the elements out of direct control of a Web page creator i.e. "off-page" factors. Search engines made the assumption that the greater the number of links from other sites pointing to a website, the more popular the website and therefore the higher quality resource.

     In response, website owners figured out many ways to get links pointing to their sites. One method was via link farms. Link farms are pages made up of long lists of unrelated links. Some link farms were created as networks of sites that contain numerous links to one another. So the search engines gradually shifted away from estimating the link quantity and started to assign a quality factor to each of the links pointing to a website. Now websites that have a higher number of high quality links are looked upon favorably by the search engines.

Link quality consists of the following factors:

· PageRank of the site providing the inbound link

· Relevance of the content of the linking site to the content of your site

· Relevance of words used in the anchor text of the links to the content of your page that the link points to

· Number of other links on the linking page. The lower this number, the more valuable the link

     Links pointing to your site from a low ranking, low traffic and unrelated website are nearly worthless.

     This lesson deals with four main types of links: inbound links, outbound links, reciprocal links (alternatively called "backlinks" for our purposes, although in some sources these two terms denote different concepts) and, finally, one-way links.

     Inbound links are links that originate from an external website (domain). Outbound links are links from your pages pointing to a page on an external domain. Reciprocal links are when both your page and a page on other site link to each other.

IMPORTANT: links are considered reciprocal if they bind pages, not sites. The links on the following diagram are not reciprocal:

     Finally, one-way links are when either Site 1 links to Site 2 or Site 2 links to Site 1 but does not receive a reciprocal link (backlink) from the same page it links to. The links on the diagram above are one-way links.

The type of links which mostly influences your link popularity is inbound one-way links. Sometimes it is assumed that outbound links might decrease a website's link popularity. This is wrong. While outbound links do nothing to increase your link popularity, you do not give away any link popularity when you link to another site.

     Due to common misuse of the terms "link popularity", "site" and "page" it is often thought that a website has a single link popularity figure associated with it for the entire domain. This is incorrect: each page of your site has its own link popularity and keyword theme.

     On the second picture, the link BX adds to link popularity of site 2 (page X) and the link CY adds to link popularity of site 1 (page C).

     Reciprocal links can add to your link popularity if the website that you exchange links with has higher link popularity than your site. However, reciprocal links are not as powerful as inbound one-way links, because the search engines assume such links are produced in an artificial manner as a result of link exchange.

Methods and techniques of building a link popularity

     You should now understand that the best way to build link popularity is by finding sources of inbound, one-way high quality links. This can be achieved in a number of different acceptable ways.

Google Catalogs

     One way to search for forward-looking links is to visit Google Catalogs. There you can find sites in the category you are interested in, visit them and then – if its page rank suits you, and it is not your direct rival you can try to get a link from them to your site. But keep in mind that it is rather difficult (or expensive) to get a link from a site with a high page rank. On the other hand a link from a site with a low page rank won't be of a great benefit to you either. Therefore, the best way is a balance between a high page rank and real possibilities of getting a link from the other site.

Key Query

     The technique is very simple: enter your keyword or key phrase and search for them on a search engine. It will return a high-quality relevant result page. The only drawback of the method is that it is very slow. You have to surf every site in order to see if it suits your purposes or not, and of course, then finding a way to contact the webmaster. With Catalogs one automatically avoids sites with a low page rank.

"Keyword" + "add Url"

     This kind of query allows you to find sites that offer a submission option. This method is less qualitative but very productive. The search engine will return a result page with the number of sites where you can submit your own website and thus get an inbound one-way link. It is real luck to get a link from a thematic site or (what is even more important) from a thematic directory. Such a link is considered highly relevant and will positively influence your own page rank and traffic.

Directories

     Directories are categorized listings of links from around the Web. There are a great variety of directories on the Web, and though only a few main directories can directly influence your inclusion and ranking in search engines, almost any directory is positive for increasing your link popularity. Directories provide a great source of quality inbound, one-way links because you do not need to link back to a directory once included in its index, and many directories are considered expert sites "casting a vote" for your site. Be careful not to confuse directories with Free-For-All link pages that are of little value. Free-For-All pages usually never decline a submission, although they say that it is only possible to be included. Getting listed in valuable human-edited directories will take more time. If the directory has a paid inclusion option, this process may be expedited. Getting listed in quality directories such as DMOZ or Yahoo can be more beneficial for your link popularity than a lot of links from smaller, newer directories.

Site content and emailing with website owners

     The traditional and the most powerful way to get inbound, one-way links is to have attractive site content that other websites will want to link to. Unfortunately, you have no control over how soon and how many other webmasters will find your resource and link to it. You can always send emails to webmasters of similar sites with a simple invitation to visit your website. Of course, webmasters have no obligation to review your site or provide an inbound link, nor are you obligated to link back to their site, even if they do provide a link. This method allows you to get links from sites other than directories, which can definitely be better. It is very important to remember that most of the top ranked sites got there because of the valuable content within, thus persuading a large number of other resources to link to them. Writing interesting and informative articles for your website is a good way of getting these kinds of links. A strategy for finding potential link partners is to look at who is linking back to your competitors. If these links are from independent Web resources, they can probably post a link to you as well. You can look for pages linking to a certain domain by entering queries using a special syntax in the search boxes of the search engines. For instance, a Google query would look like: link:www.yourcompetitor.com

     This query will list all the sites found in Google's index that link to www.yourcompetitor.com. Web CEO has a nice tool called Partner Finder which can be used for link partner search. It also offers an easy and handy e-mail preferences tab and other services to manage correspondence with potential partners. Remember that no one is obliged to link to you and the only thing you should say in your message is the suggestion that they consider the possibility of linking to your site as a valuable resource for their visitors. To evaluate each potential link partner, you can use the Google toolbar in combination with the Alexa toolbar. Visit a potential link partner's site with these two toolbars installed and look at the figures they display. The Google toolbar provides information about the PageRank of the site (although you shouldn't entirely base your decision on this) and the Alexa toolbar will tell you what kind of traffic the potential link partner has. Alexa traffic rank is a reverse indication: the closer to 1 the Alexa Rank is, the more traffic this site receives. However, the graphical presentation works the same way as the Google toolbar: the longer the blue strip, the more traffic. There's not much sense in getting a link from a low traffic website, especially if it has PageRank lower than 3. By finding out the page rank you will know how much value Google puts into that link.

NOT TO DO list:

     Do not add your link to a large link list that many webmasters keep on their website and that consists of only links. Actually if a link list consists of more than 100 links, this is considered a link farm (accorging to the Google Webmaster Guidelines). Important search engines like Google recognize this and don't count these as inbound links. In fact, your rankings may even be damaged as a result. 

     Do not link to a website just because of its high Google PageRank. When you link to the sites with a high PageRank that means nothing for your own rank. However, if it is a professional resource with valuable content for your visitors, you should definitely link to it!

What you should remember from this lesson:

     1. The best and most effective way of increasing your search engine ranks is working to improve your website's link popularity. This can be achieved by getting as many inbound, one-way links as you can from quality sites and directories. To get the best quality inbound one-way links, your site needs to provide valuable content, then request a link from sites similar to yours.

      
     2. Increasing link popularity is a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating process. Even so, it is definitely worth the time and effort when you see a dramatic increase in traffic.

Google PageRank, Local Rank and Hilltop Algorithms 

     Google PageRank (further referred to as PR) is a system for ranking Web pages used by the Google search engine. It was developed by Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University. PageRank ("PageRank" written together is a trademark that belongs to Google) is the heart of Google's algorithm and makes it the most complex of all the search engines.

     PageRank uses the Internet's link structure as an indication of each Web page's relevancy value. Sites considered high quality by Google receive a higher Page Rank and – as a consequence – a higher ranking in Google results (the interdependence between PageRank and site rankings in the search results is discussed later in this lesson). Further, since Google is currently the world's most popular search engine, the ranking a site receives in its search results has a significant impact on the volume of visitor traffic for that site.

      You can view an approximation of the PageRank value currently assigned to each of your pages by Google if you download and install Google's toolbar for Microsoft Internet Explorer (alternatives also exist for other popular browsers). The Google toolbar will display the PageRank based on a 0 to 10 scale, however a page's true PageRank has many contributing factors and is known only to Google.

      For each of your pages PageRank may be different, and the PageRanks of all the pages of your site participate in the calculation of PageRank for your domain.

      For each of your pages, the PR value is almost completely dependent upon links pointing to your site, reduced, to some degree, by the total number of links to other sites on the linking page. Thus, a link to your site will have the highest amount of impact on your PR if the page linking to yours has a high PR itself and the total number of links on that page is low, ideally, just the one link to your site.

The actual formula (well, an approximate one, according to Google's official papers) for PR is as follows:

PR(A) = (1-d) + d (PR(T1)/C(T1) + ... + PR(Tn)/C(Tn))

where pages T1...Tn all point to page A. The parameter d is a damping factor which can be set between 0 and 1. Google usually sets d to 0.85. C(T) is defined as the number of links going out of page T.

     Thus, a site with a high PR but a large number of outbound links can nullify its own impact on your PR. To increase your PageRank, get as many links to your site from pages with a high PR and a low number of total links. Alternatively, obtain as many links pointing to your site as you can, no matter what their PageRank is, as long as they are ranked. It depends on each specific case which variant will get the best out of the PR formula.

     Those of you interested in the mathematical aspect will see that the formula is cyclic: the PR of each page depends on the PR of the pages pointing to it. But we won't know what PR those pages have until the pages pointing to them have their PR calculated and so on. Google resolves this by implementing an iterative algorithm which starts without knowing the real PR for each page and assuming it to be 1. Then the algorithm runs as many times as needed and on each run it gets closer to the estimate of the final value.

     Each time the calculation runs, the value of PageRank for each page participating in the calculation changes. When these changes become insignificant or stop after a certain number of iterations, the algorithm assumes it now has the final Page Rank values for each page.

     Real Page Ranks range from 0.15 (for pages that have no inbound links at all) up to a very large number. The actual value changes every time Google does re-indexing and adds new pages to its database. Most experts agree on the point that the interdependence of toolbar PR and real PR are based on the logarithmic scale. Here's what it means if we assume that the base for the algorithm is, for instance, 10:

Toolbar PageRank (log base 10)	Real PageRank
0	0 .15 – 10
1	100 – 1,000
2	1,000 – 10 , 000
3	10,000 – 100,000
4	100,000 – 1,000,000
5	1,000,000 – 10,000,000
6	10,000,000 – 100,000,000
7	100,000,000 – 1,000,000,000
8	1,000,000,000 – 10,000,000,000
9	10,000,000,000 – 100,000,000,000
10	100,000,000,000 – 1,000,000,000,000

     Although there is no evidence that the logarithm is based on 10, the main point is that it becomes harder and harder to move up the toolbar, because the gaps to overcome become larger and larger with each step. This means that for new websites, "toolbar" PR values between 1 and 3 may be relatively easy to acquire, but getting to 4 requires considerably more effort and then pushing up to 5 is even harder still.

     As you may have figured out from the formula above, every page has at least a PR of 0.15 even if it doesn’t have any inbound links pointing to it. But this may only be in theory – there are rumors that Google applies a post-spidering phase whereby any pages that have no incoming links at all are completely deleted from the index.

Local Rank

     Local Rank is an algorithm similar to PR which is written by Krishna Bharat of the HillTop project. Google applied for a patent in 2001 and received it in early 2003. To sum it up, this algorithm re-ranks the results returned for a certain user's query by looking at the inter-connectivity between the results. This means that after a search is done, the PR algorithm is run among the result pages only, and the pages that have the most links from other pages in that set will rank highest.

     Essentially, it's a way of making sure that links are relevant and ranking sites accordingly. Please note that this algorithm does not count links from your own site – or, to be more exact, links from the same IP address.

     Assuming that it is used by Google, make sure that you first get links pointing to you from other pages that rank well (or rank at all) for the keyword that you are targeting. Directories such as Yahoo! and DMOZ would be a good place to start – they tend to rank well for a wide range of keywords. Also, keep in mind that this is about pages, not sites. The links need to be from the pages that rank well – not other pages on sites that rank well.

Hilltop

     Hilltop is a patented algorithm that was created in 1999 by Krishna Bharath and George A. Mihaila of the University of Toronto. The algorithm is used to find topic relevant documents to the particular keyword topic. Hilltop operates on a special index of " expert documents".

     Basically, it looks at the relationship between the "Expert" and "Authority" pages. An "Expert" is a page that links to lots of other relevant documents. An "Authority" is a page that has links pointing to it from the "Expert" pages. Here they mean pages about a specific topic and having links to many non-affiliated pages on that topic. Pages are defined as non-affiliated if they are authored by authors from non-affiliated organizations. So, if your website has backlinks from many of the best expert pages it will be an "Authority".

     In theory, Google finds "Expert" pages and then the pages that they link to would rank well. Pages on sites like Yahoo!, DMOZ, college sites and library sites can be considered experts.

     Google acquired the algorithm in February 2003.

Site Structure and PageRank

     PageRank can be transmitted from page to page via links across different pages of your site as well as across all the sites in the Web. Knowing this, it’s possible to organize your link system in such a way that your content-rich pages receive and retain the highest PageRank.

      The pages of your site receive PageRank from outside through inbound links. If you've got many inbound links to different pages of your site, it means PageRank enters your site at many points.

     Such "PageRank entry points" can pass PageRank further on to other pages of your site.

     The idea that you should keep in mind is that the amount of PageRank that a page of your site is able to give to another page depends on how many links the first (linking) page itself contains. This page only has a certain amount of Page Rank, which is going to be distributed over several other pages that this page links to.

    The best way to obtain a good PR on all of your pages is to have a well thought-out linking structure for your site.

     What this means is that every page on your site should have multiple links from your other pages coming into it. Since PR is passed on from page to page - the higher the PR that a page has, the more it has to pass on. Pages with a low number of links on them will pass relatively more PR per link. However, on your own site, you want all of your pages to benefit - usually. Also, PR is passed back and forth between all of your pages - this means that your home page gets an additional boost because, generally, every page on your site links to your home page.

     Let's look at the prototypes of site linking schemes that may be beneficial in terms of PR distribution. 

1. Simple hierarchy.

     The boxes denote separate pages and the figures in them denote the PR value calculated with the help of a simple algorithm that takes into consideration only these pages. With a site structure like this, it's pretty easy to get a high PR for your home page; however this is an ideal situation which is difficult to recreate in real life: you will want to get more cross-linking then just links from all your pages to the home page.

2. Linking to external pages that return backlinks

     This just means creating a link directory page on your site and benefit a bit from link exchange with the external pages. Link exchanges are dealt with in the next lesson.

3. Site with inbound and outbound links

This is very similar to the first scheme, however, here there is an external site (Site A) passing its PR to your home page which then distributes it to child pages. You can see that both a homepage's PR and that of the child pages have significantly increased. It doesn't matter how many pages you have in your site, your average PR will always be 1.0 at best. But a hierarchical layout can strongly concentrate votes and, therefore the PR, into the home page.

     So here are some main conclusions you should keep in mind when optimizing the link structure of your site for better PR distribution.

·  If a particular page is very important – use a hierarchical structure with the important page at the "top".

·  When a group of pages may contain outward links – increase the number of internal links to retain as much PR as possible.

·  When a group of pages do not contain outward links – the number of internal links in the site has no effect on the site's average PR. You might as well use a link structure that gives the user the best navigational experience.

How your PageRank influences your rankings

     While the exact algorithm of each search engine is a closely guarded secret, search engine analysts believe that search engine results (ranking) are some form of a multiplier factor of Page relevance (which is determined from your multiple of "on-page" and "off-page" factors) and PageRank. Simply put, the formula would look something like –

     Ranking = [Page Relevance] * [PageRank]

     The PR logic makes sense since the algorithm seems invulnerable to spammers. The search results of Google search have demonstrated high relevance and this is one of the main reasons for their resounding success. Most other major search engines have adopted this logic in their own algorithms in some form or other, varying the importance they assign to this value in ranking sites in their search engine result pages.

What you should remember from this lesson:

     1. PageRank was developed by Google to estimate the absolute (keyword-independent) importance of every page in its index. When Google pulls out the results in response to a Web surfer's query, it does something similar to multiplying the relevance of each page by the PR value. So, PageRank is really worth fighting for.

      
      2. PageRank depends on how many pages out there link to yours (the more, the better) and how many other links these pages contain (the less, the better). 

      3. You may try to optimize the link structure of your site for better PageRank distribution. Most simply, you should create a site map, get many cross-links between your pages and organize a hierarchy link structure with the most important pages on the top.

Link Building Strategies and Techniques

     It is common knowledge that inbound links to your site are very important. Reciprocal and inbound linking will bring you a great deal of traffic apart from search engines. As it was already mentioned it can also greatly influence your ranking although the weight of reciprocal and inbound links is somewhat different.

     Inbound, non-reciprocal links are most profitable and at the same time the most difficult to obtain. Non-reciprocal links have some advantages when comparing with reciprocal links: they have bigger weight for search engines and one more thing – you don't have to monitor them as carefully as reciprocal links (webmasters could probably use such black-hat techniques as attempts to hide your link from search engines).

     So the question comes up – how to get them? The first and the most perfect way is to write a unique, really valuable content. You'll be surprised when some webmaster links to you just because you provide useful or interesting information. A high-quality and regularly updated site will naturally be linked to.

      Another method is via directory listing. It is easier to get inbound links from directories but it will cost some money. Of course it is nice to have links from first-level directories such as Yahoo! Directory and the Open Directory Project (DMOZ). Yahoo! Directory offers guaranteed review in 7 days just for $299 and with DMOZ one waits for months to be listed (if a voluntary editor doesn't reject your site). For this approach there are a lot of other secondary and topic-specific directories. Moreover, topic-specific directories may be even more valuable as the links they provide are relevant.

     One more way is to write an article and then publish it. It is very time consuming as you have to write it, optimize it (a well optimized article gives more weight to targeted keywords as it is absolutely relevant and thus raises the weight of the link) and finding a site to submit to. It is, however, worth it despite all these difficulties as articles provide valuable and entirely relevant links, moreover it can bring highly targeted traffic.

If your budget allows, buy some links on related sites. When doing so consider whether you aim to quantity or quality. Links from sites with a low rank won't bring any considerable profit and sites with a high rank will cost a lot.

Another tactics is to create press releases. Most press release Web services allow users to subscribe to subjects they are interested in. There is a nice chance that your press release will be brought to a potential client. The service is hardly free but it will be cheaper than paid links (for press release writing tips visit http://www.sitepronews.com/archives/2005/mar/25.html).

     Link exchange is also important because it helps to improve link popularity and also the PageRank. The best thing about the link exchange is getting a lot of links pointing to your site. As a result, this will improve your PR, link popularity, and possibly your traffic. That's why building solid link popularity should become one of the daily tasks of your SEO campaign.

     Reciprocal links are not as bad as some people think. If link exchanges are made between sites sharing similar themes and topics, the exchange is beneficial to both sites – these are the best types of reciprocal links to seek out. You should try to avoid exchanging links with sites that are not relevant to the themes and topics of your site.

     Link Exchange with a site which has a lower PR will not harm your PR and will be beneficial for both sides if the content is interrelated. Each page sends to the other the amount of PageRank that is available for transfer. Lower-PR pages do not cut down the receiving page's PageRank, rather they enhance it, but to a lower extent, and that's all. Over time, their available PageRank may also increase.

     However, not everybody out there is aware of this fact. Often webmasters fall under the false conviction that if they exchange links with a low-PR site, their PR will be hurt. You may run into difficulty with other sites that believe this and don't want to exchange links with your new site because your pages show a PR of 0. If you do encounter this situation, either focus on exchanging links with other new sites or ignore link exchanges for now and concentrate on the other linking methods described earlier. Once your PR increases, you can come back to pursuing link exchanges.

Preparing for link exchange

     The first step is to create a link directory within your site to organize your outbound links. When creating the directory, if applicable use the same template used for other pages of your site. Make sure not to place more than 100 links on one page of your directory (according to Google Webmaster Guidelines). Instead, split your directory into several pages; otherwise, it may be considered a link farm by search engines . This could affect your rankings and webmasters that are aware of the issue will not want to exchange links.

      Second, compile a list of potential link partners. Do a search on your targeted keywords in targeted search engines like Google. See which pages are ranking high. Consider if it's possible to get a link from these top sites. For instance, if the number one site in the Yahoo! Directory is Adobe or Microsoft, you'll have little chance of securing a link. For sites that do seem like viable candidates, check to see if they meet the following criteria: 

      1. The content must be relevant to yours. 

      2. They must be open for link exchange possibilities. For instance, you see other sites' banners or links posted or you find the site has its own link directory. 

      3. They must correspond to your requirements in terms of PageRank (not obligatory) and traffic rank (much more important). You can measure the traffic rank of the site with the help of Alexa toolbar (www.alexa.com) and PR with the help of Google toolbar. If a site has a lot of traffic, it is likely a valuable source of traffic for you. 

      4. The webmaster's or other contact's e-mail address must be available to send your link exchange proposition.

     Another place to look for related sites is directories. Go to directories like Yahoo! Directory, DMOZ or the many smaller directories found on the Web to find categories related to your topic and keywords. Web sites listed under these directories may be suitable candidates for link exchange since the directory listing will give them a boost and they'll have already been listed and ranked with search engines.

     Yet another place to look for potential link partners is the lists of sites that link to your competitors or to sites ranked high for your keywords. Such lists may be made up with the help of Web CEO's Link Analyzer by using the "Who links to me" analysis of your competitor's page or other high ranking, a keyword related page or Web CEO's special tool called Partner Finder.

Performing the link exchange

      Before you start e-mailing with webmasters of potential link exchange sites, make sure to first include links to them in your link directory to demonstrate that you've already favored the site with a link. Place links to the most important or prestigious sites on your home page.

     Then, create a outreach mail template to send to webmasters. You should, of course, personalize each email as much as possible before sending it. There are many so-called "link exchange" software programs available that will automatically mail to hundreds of webmasters by substituting their names and emails into the template. In our opinion this software nullifies the benefits of exchanging links. You will probably need to deal with most of your messages being returned for manual confirmation by the webmaster's spam filter, and most webmasters are able to recognize a template generated email. Just as you are unlikely to value a link exchange proposition from someone that hasn't even visited your site, other webmasters won't either.

      That's why we stand for manually visiting each partner's site and personalizing messages. Web CEO offers an easy and handy e-mail preferences tab and other services to manage correspondence with potential partners in a Partner Finder tool. Configure e-mail preferences so that the program will know how to correspond with potential link partners. The Partner Finder tool enables the creation of one or several message templates. Overall, it definitely lightens up the workload for manual and personalized correspondence.

      Below is an example of a link exchange template: Dear [site owner's first name]:

My name is [your name], the webmaster for [your site/company name].

     I am currently browsing your website [site address] and find it a very interesting and relevant resource for [topic of the site]. I also believe your site provides valuable content for my visitors, so I have placed a link to your page [page address] on my page [your link directory address] where I direct my visitors who are looking for more information on [topic].

     I only list sites that I feel add perceived value and will not list every site that offers similar services. I have pulled a description for your site from your META tags but I am happy to add or delete any content that you prefer. Let me know if I can do anything to add more value to your listing.

     I don't expect a reciprocal link from your website, but would greatly appreciate one if you currently have a directory of links yourself, or if you believe your website visitors would find our site content of benefit. If you do decide to link back, please link to [preferred URL to link to] using the following description: [preferred link description].

     Once again, thank you very much for providing a valuable resource to our visitors and clients. If you have any suggestions for related websites not listed on our resources page, feel free to let me know. My phone number is listed below, or you can send me an email. Also, thank you for taking the time to review this email.

Sincerely,

[your name]

[your position]

[your company]

[your phone number]

[your email address]

     Once you have added a link to each of the sites you have identified, it is time to contact the site owners. Usually this is done by email. Due to the volume of spam most webmasters receive, it is very important to let them know that you have actually visited their site in the first few sentences. Only then mention that you would appreciate it if they reciprocate.

Things to remember from this lesson:

      1. Inbound non-reciprocal links can raise your rank noticeably. Major tactics are as follows: write unique valuable content, write and submit articles, buy links on the related sites, create press releases. 

      2. Link exchange can't damage your rankings except for link exchanges with link farms. Link exchanges will benefit your PageRank and link popularity as well as those of your link partner. 

      3. When preparing for link exchanges, create your own link directory (not more than 100 entries per page), compile a list of your desired link partners and place a link to them in your directory beforehand. If they refuse reciprocation, you can always remove the link in favor of more receptive link partners. 

      4. Personalize each letter you send with as much information as possible, including the story about what you've found most valuable on their resources.