The Link Wheel Workbook

Everyone wants traffic to their website. However, most people don’t know what it takes to get traffic. It’s a simple process, contrary to what the gurus will tell you. All you have to do is find good keywords, write quality content based on those keywords and then build backlinks to that content.

This is where most people drop the ball. They think if they write it people will come. This just isn’t true. What makes your content any better than the next guy’s What makes Google or any other search engine chooses to show your site in the search engine results as opposed to your neighbor’s

The answer is links. The number of people, places, sites that are linking to your content is what makes the difference between whether your site shows up in the search engine results or someone else’s. Now you just need to know what backlinks are and how to get them.

The first question is very simple, and what I will be dealing with in this article. Backlinks, simply put, are links pointing back to your site or a page on your site. Backlinks can happen in any number of ways. You can write something amazing other people like and want to tell people about and they link to you. You can take the process in your own hands and send out articles or make comments on blogs. There are of course, differing degrees of value between backlinks.

Google counts all the backlinks you have to your site. Some links it gives more weight to, others it gives less to. You will be wise to take on a link building strategy that involves both quality and quantity because both are important. You want to get backlinks from high page rank sites, Google likes these and gives you a little more credit for them. You also want to get links from directories, and other quantity type places. Although Google doesn’t give you as much credit for these you certainly get credit for having a lot of backlinks to your site.

The best possible backlink you can get is one where you have your chosen keyword in the anchor text of the link. This means if you had words in a sentence that someone could click on to go somewhere else, these would be your keywords. This is important because you are trying to rank in the search engine for specific keywords. Each time you have a link with a certain keyword or some derivation of it, you get credit. So never, never, write a link and have the words you click on be “click here” that’s a ridiculous waste of a backlink, unless, of course you are linking to someone you don’t want to give a backlink to.

You can link within your own site, from free places like squidoo and hubpages. There are a million places to get backlinks to your site. It can be the most boring part of online marketing, but if you don’t do it you will never find yourself number one in google and getting all that traffic.

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Sometimes called inbound links, backlinks are the lifeblood of Search Engine Positioning. In order for a website to be on the top of search engines like Google without the webmaster having to pay big money for advertising, the website has to have a large number of backlinks. Backlinks are links on one website that lead back to another website. The more established, high quality, and high Page Rank the website that contains the link has, the more power it has to help the linked website with its search engine position. If the website that is getting backlinks gets many High Quality and High Page Rank backlinks, the better the chance it has of being in a high position on the Search Engines.

How does a webmaster go about getting high quality backlinks to his or her website? There are many ways this can be done. Some people advocate writing and submitting articles, posting on forums, making comments on blogs. Others talk about submitting their website to various Internet directories. One directory that has an excellent reputation is called DMOZ, or the “Open Directory”. This directory is probably the most respected directory online today. The websites it contains have all been placed there by human editors; there is no “automation” to this directory. The only drawback that’s been discussed about this directory is that it takes so long to have a website included.

Another way that many people build backlinks for their website is to use Social Bookmarking websites. A “Social Bookmark” is a website that usually has a very popular ‘community’ aspect to it. Users sign up and create profiles on the sites that contain photos and information about themselves. They then can save “bookmarks” of favorite websites which can be itemized by ‘tags’, which are one or two word descriptions of what the sites contain, and these bookmarks can be saved to a list that’s private or can be listed publicly, so that everybody can see it.

With the advent of what is known as Web 2.0, gaining backlinks is easier now than in any time in the history of the internet. Most sites now have an “interactive” quality to them nowadays. Readers can often sign in and create profiles. They then are often allowed to post comments on the stories or articles on the website or blog. In many cases, the website or blog owner responds to these comments; thus making this section of the website or blog a conversation.

Backlinking strategies can be easy and fun and the website owner who is working on getting more backlinks for his website can learn new things, meet new people, and have a tremendous amount of fun doing something that was once a chore: building backlinks.

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Getting a high traffic website is directly tied into how easily accessible you are in the search engines. The search engines if managed correctly can turn your lackluster internet business into an overnight success. The problem that occurs when trying to get high rankings with the search engines is the competition that you will encounter for the same keywords. There are ways that you can top your competition even if several competitors are using the same keywords. The easiest and most effective way to conquer your competitors is to get more backlinks. If you are trying to find a way to increase your page rank, you will have to get thousands of backlinks. Today I will share with you some ways to generate thousands of backlinks to increase your page ranking.

The most common method of getting more backlinks to your website or blog is to research other similar websites that have high page ranks and solicit them for a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is when you agree to add another marketer’s link on your website in return they will advertise your link. This method can be time consuming and very difficult because someone with a high page rank is usually not interested in a link exchange, especially from a lesser page rank website. If you still want to pursue this method you should send the website owner an email stating your interest in a reciprocal link and patiently wait for a response.

Forums are great sources to get thousands of backlinks. Forums are indexed by the search engines on a regular basis, so when you make a post to your favorite forum, it gets picked by the search engines. Make sure that when you sign up for a forum to leave your website or you business opportunities in your forum signature. The advantages of a creating a forum signature is, when someone clicks on a forum topic that was indexed by the search engines, they will have a direct link to your website from your forum signature. The more post you make to different topics, the more backlinks you will create to your website.

Writing articles on topics relating to your website and submitting your articles to article directories will also help to get more backlinks. The key to article writing is to write to write in a way that your audience understands; it doesn’t have to be very technical. Most newbie marketers get intimidated by this method, but it is actually one of the simplest and best producing methods you can use to get thousands of backlinks. The most popular article directories are Goarticles and Ezine articles. Before you submit your article, read their instructions carefully, they do have some guidelines that are mandatory.

Web 2.0 is the new wave that is taking the internet into the next generation of Advertising. The main ingredient of the Web 2.0 concept is social networking websites. Social networking sites are quickly becoming the most popular and effective way to get thousands of backlinks to your website. Basically Web 2.0 sites like Digg, Reddit, and Sphinn provide high pr backlinks to your website. Social networking sites are very Google friendly and you do not have to write a 500 word article to create a backlink. There are literally thousands of social networking and bookmarking sites popping up everyday. Internet marketers are taking advantage of the social marketing phenomenon by generating thousands of backlinks to their perspective sites. Currently there are bookmarking softwares that allow you post to hundreds social networking websites with just one click.

The next time you are thinking of bringing more visitors to your website or increasing your page rankings remember these methods. The internet changes everyday but core is always a constant, getting thousands of relevant backlinks to your website will you’re your website relevance with the search engines..

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Getting a high traffic website is directly tied into how easily accessible you are in the search engines. The search engines if managed correctly can turn your lackluster internet business into an overnight success. The problem that occurs when trying to get high rankings with the search engines is the competition that you will encounter for the same keywords. There are ways that you can top your competition even if several competitors are using the same keywords. The easiest and most effective way to conquer your competitors is to get more backlinks. If you are trying to find a way to increase your page rank, you will have to get thousands of backlinks. Today I will share with you some ways to generate thousands of backlinks to increase your page ranking.

The most common method of getting more backlinks to your website or blog is to research other similar websites that have high page ranks and solicit them for a reciprocal link. A reciprocal link is when you agree to add another marketer’s link on your website in return they will advertise your link. This method can be time consuming and very difficult because someone with a high page rank is usually not interested in a link exchange, especially from a lesser page rank website. If you still want to pursue this method you should send the website owner an email stating your interest in a reciprocal link and patiently wait for a response.

Forums are great sources to get thousands of backlinks. Forums are indexed by the search engines on a regular basis, so when you make a post to your favorite forum, it gets picked by the search engines. Make sure that when you sign up for a forum to leave your website or you business opportunities in your forum signature. The advantages of a creating a forum signature is, when someone clicks on a forum topic that was indexed by the search engines, they will have a direct link to your website from your forum signature. The more post you make to different topics, the more backlinks you will create to your website.

Writing articles on topics relating to your website and submitting your articles to article directories will also help to get more backlinks. The key to article writing is to write to write in a way that your audience understands; it doesn’t have to be very technical. Most newbie marketers get intimidated by this method, but it is actually one of the simplest and best producing methods you can use to get thousands of backlinks. The most popular article directories are Goarticles and Ezine articles. Before you submit your article, read their instructions carefully, they do have some guidelines that are mandatory.

Web 2.0 is the new wave that is taking the internet into the next generation of Advertising. The main ingredient of the Web 2.0 concept is social networking websites. Social networking sites are quickly becoming the most popular and effective way to get thousands of backlinks to your website. Basically Web 2.0 sites like Digg, Reddit, and Sphinn provide high pr backlinks to your website. Social networking sites are very Google friendly and you do not have to write a 500 word article to create a backlink. There are literally thousands of social networking and bookmarking sites popping up everyday. Internet marketers are taking advantage of the social marketing phenomenon by generating thousands of backlinks to their perspective sites. Currently there are bookmarking softwares that allow you post to hundreds social networking websites with just one click.

The next time you are thinking of bringing more visitors to your website or increasing your page rankings remember these methods. The internet changes everyday but core is always a constant, getting thousands of relevant backlinks to your website will always increase relevance with the search engines.

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Those in the Internet business, especially those in Search Engine Optimization, are very familiar with backlinks. Also known as inbound or inward links, backlinks are the incoming links to your website. They are links in other websites that direct readers to your site. Backlinks reveal how popular or important your website it, thus, they are very important.       

One particular reason why backlinks are important is the way they are used by search engines. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use backlinks to determine just how important a website is. They use backlinks, among other factors, to assess if a website is relevant enough to appear in the page results of a particular search inquiry. The more backlinks you have, the better the chances that Google of Yahoo will consider your website relevant. It follows then that the more backlinks you have, the more visitors you will  get.

Once you become aware how important backlinks are, it is time to focus on creating them. This is very easy. One way to do this is to leave your link when you comment on blogs. Of course, it is not enough to comment on just any blog. Choose blogs with content that is remotely related to the content of your website. This way, you are building quality backlinks. Another way to create backlinks is to post links together with your signature when you comment on forums. Submitting your URL to directories is another great way to create backlinks.

Creating backlinks may seem like an exhausting part of managing your website but it will be worth it. Backlinks determine your website’s popularity and this is something any webmaster should focus on.

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I hear this question constantly on the internet recently. Since backlinks play a huge, huge part of how you rank in Google, MSN, etc, then people naturally want to find a fast, easy, and effective way to build backlinks. It has to be a legit way so you don’t find yourself banned one way, so you need to trade like a normal exchange, but in an automated way so you’re continually hunting down trading partners and changing html code all the time.

Despite what you may hear on the internet, backlinks are still very much alive and highly valued by search engines. The internet is sometimes called the Web because, like in a spider web, one point ( a website) connects to many others. Web sites linking to each other is not only usual, but essential.

The deal with Google and backlinks is that they too agree that backlinks are natural. On-topic backlinks that is. Sites naturally, if there were no incentive due to search engines, link to other websites their visitors would also like. This is an on-topic backlink, and is valued by search engines much more than random backlinks for the sake of having a link.

So, what does this teach us as webmasters?

What it means to us is that while we should keep search engines in our mind when working on websites and designing them, the focus should be users. Provide good material and a good website, and you’ll naturally get backlinks and build a relationship with your users. Word of mouth is a very powerful friend indeed.

So, what CAN you can do to build your backlinks?

There are many options you can use to build natural-type backlinks.
1. Write articles. Writing articles(like I am doing now) and having them get out to article directories and other websites means you get free backlinks from good sources. This really helps out, and the more you write, the more gain and traffic you’ll see. Write an article a day and you’re in great shape.

2. Join an on-the-level link exchange site. This means join one in which every exchange is manually approved, and not one where 10,000 links show up to your site overnight. You can see where that is not a natural curve, so stick with link exchange sites that you choose who you link to/from and stay safe. Another positive note is that the other websites are there looking to exchange also, so it’s much faster than searching down websites and waiting weeks for a response.

3. Link directories. This is where you submit your site link, and in return give the directory site a backlink(usually mandatory). Though these aren’t too valueable to Google, they still may get you some visitors here and there which is always a good thing.

So, in conclusion, let’s come back to the initial question. Do link exchanges work? Absolutely. There are many ways to get legit backlinks (much safer) and that’s what you need to concentrate on. The trick is to keep your link partners as close to your topic as you can. The more relevant, the more it weighs.

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When you have a site online no matter what it is, it is important for you to be able to build backlinks to your site. Do you have a sports site that you want to build sports backlinks to?

This can be done easily enough. It will take you some time to do but once it gets started it is much easier to keep it going. There are a couple of different ways that you can get the sports backlinks that you want.

One: Directory submissions. You want to make sure that you submit your website at the popular directories such as MSN, Dmoz, and Yahoo. Your pages need to have relevant information and they have to meet the rules and regulations of each of the directories but they will gladly accept your website if you meet these two things.

Usually when you submit your site to these directories for sports backlinks, they will be reviewed manually by editors and they wont approve your site for a backlink if it is junk or irrelevant to the given topic or category. Once you site has been approved by the editors you will get a good quality backlink that will help with your search engine ranking.

Two: Article submissions. This is one of the best ways to get the sports backlinks that you want. However, the article has to contain useful information and it has to be approved by the editors of the article directories. You want to make sure that when you submit your article, it needs to be categorized right. So for example, if you are writing an article about sports or sports equipment, then you need to make sure that you put it in the sports category or one that is relevant to the article.

Another thing you want to make sure that you do is to submit your article to the more popular article directories to get the most sports backlinks such as, iSnare, EzineArticles, IdeaMarketers, GoArticles, etc. There are a lot of directories that you can use but starting with the most popular ones will help you to build backlinks faster.

Three: Blogs and Forums. These are also great for building backlinks to your site. You have to be careful when using this method because of the fact that public participation is high in these two areas, which means that they are more prone to having people start link spamming.

This is not something that you ever want to do. You need to make sure that you get good quality backlinks. The way to do this is with blogs and forums you need to participate only in constructive discussions and be careful about accepting backlinks if they point to poor content or lesser ranked sites.

These are all very good ways to build your sports backlinks. You just have to make sure that you get started and then keep getting more and more backlinks on a daily or weekly basis. The more effort you put into getting good quality backlinks the more traffic you will get to your site and the better page rank it will receive.

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Nowadays if we want a website to be successful, we have to deal with niche markets, great content, search engine optimization and tremendous competition. And this list is simply the starting point. We will quite possibly need to acquaint ourselves with marketing and copywriting and converting our visitors into buyers. However, for just about every webmaster, the big difficulty is bringing in traffic.

That leads us to the topic of this article. How can I attract Internet surfers to my site? One answer to this question is backlinks! So, exactly what are backlinks and just what do backlinks have to do with attracting visitors to my site?

The first thing to understand is that there are two basic forms of traffic, paid traffic and organic traffic. Examples of paid traffic are such things as advertising through pay per click networks, placing banners on other sites and any other way in which you are able to pay to attract a surfer’s attention and tempt him to visit your site. If you’re only focusing on paid traffic then you don’t need to pay much attention to backlinks.

Organic traffic is traffic that comes from someone searching on one of the search engines for a topic which they are interested in. Then when all the free listings come up the surfer clicks on a link to visit a webpage. In the case of organic traffic the webmaster does not have to pay directly for the link which the visitor clicks on.

In general, organic traffic is simply called free traffic. Despite the fact that it can be, it usually is not really free. To get a website page included on the first couple of pages of results the webmaster will have to put in quite a lot of work. This brings us back to the topic of backlinks.

Generally, the quality and number of backlinks attached to a site are what determines sites which appear when we do a search. A backlink is nothing more than a hyperlink from one site to another. So it is very helpful if you have a whole lot of websites linking to your site if you want to be ranked highly in the organic search engine results.

But remember that quality matters too. A backlink will be seen as offering high quality if:

* The words used to create the hyperlink (called the ‘anchor’ text) are highly relevant to the topic of the page which the link is leading to. (You should not use “click here”!)

* The topic on the site where the backlink originates is relevant to the topic on your site.

* The site linking to you has plenty of good quality backlinks pointing to it.

* The page rank of the site linking to you is relatively high (ideally a PR3 or more) and the higher the better.

Of course there are other criteria, but the criteria given here are a very good starting point.

So, just how does a webmaster go about building up the necessary quantity of high quality backlinks pointing to his site? There are many ways of doing this and an even greater number of software programs which are designed to assist in providing the answer. Purchasing the software increases the cost of your backlinks.

The truly free way is to simply wait for other webmasters to discover your site and think enugh of it to link to it. That is super, but can take quite a long time. Of course you can contact other webmasters and ask if they will trade links with you. You simply give them a link from your site and they give you one from their site in return. These are however called reciprocal links and are generally thought to be of uncertain value these days.

Another way is to make use of Article Marketing which initially means writing articles about subjects that are relevant to your site. You then submit your articles to several article directory sites and include links of your choice in the resources box following your content. Submitting your website to a number of site directories is another method that fits into the category of free links.

You might also opt to pay for backlinks. One of the simplest methods is to buy a link directly. Internet marketing discussion boards are a very good place to find links on offer. You could pay $50 a month or more to get a link from a PR5 site. You’ll get a lot of traffic from it, but you will pay for it. Naturally the lower the PR is then the lower the cost.

Whatever technique you choose, building backlinks is critical to your search engine ranking success. You’ll want to acquire hundreds or if possible thousands of them. The important thing is that you get started and build up your links steadily over the months ahead so that you can begin to enjoy a steady and growing flow of traffic to your site.

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Once you realize just how important backlinks are to your rank in search engines like Google and yahoo you will start wondering about how to get backlinks and more of them! With an estimated 80% of page rank being determined by backlinks it is no wonder this is of prime importance to anyone who needs people to find their website amongst the clutter of the net.

The issue many people ignore in their quest for backlinks is that not all of them are alike. Smart search engines have long ago learned that people will do unscrupulous things on the net to manipulate their methods of determining good websites and have ways of detecting and qualifying good backlinks. A backlink itself is a way to determine if a site is popular as reciprocal links are not as good as webmasters can just “swap links” to gain more links; backlinks go just one way so there is less chance of anything being manipulated for gain.

The other issue with backlinks is quality. For a backlink to be counted by a search engine as good an that will help rank up your site it must fulfill a set of criteria to prove its quality. While search engines do not give out their code on this matter it essentially comes down to three things:

Relevance – The site the backlink comes from must have some relevance to your site. Links from sites that are similar to your own will be counted more highly than those from sites that have no relevance to your site.
Page Rank – The popularity of the site that the backlink comes from it very important. If a very large popular site links to you it is seen as a bigger endorsement than a bunch of very low page rank sites backlinking you.
Originality – The content of the site that backlinks you must also be original content. Google punishes copied material and links from sites that are punished are punished accordingly also.

So now you know what a quality backlink is how do you get more of them? One way is to write articles and link your site from the article that you post on article sites that litter the net. Another tactic is to post in forums with your site in your signature so every time you post you create a backlink. As always if you site is good, well put together and relevant then you will create backlinks from people simply willing to link you and some smart networking can also help. How to get backlinks quickly though is another matter entirely as it is a slow process.

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The best way to boost traffic to your site, even better than pay-per-click, is backlinks. Backlinks are links to your site from other web sites all over the internet.

How do you build thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of backlinks? You do it by writing articles, and distributing them to web sites related to your industry.

Backlinks are the Fuel that Drives Traffic

Backlinks drive traffic to your site in two ways. First, you’ll always have a link back to your site in the resource box of your articles. A reader interested in visiting your site can click this link to go right to your site, or any page within your site you want to drive them to.

Second, one of the major factors Google looks at when ranking pages is the relevancy of the site. If you have thousands of links to your site Google will deem your site highly relevant. That will rank your site higher, and mean more people will find your site when searching your keywords.

Backlinks are FREE

The beauty of backlinks is that they don’t cost you a thing. How much would pay-per-click cost you for highly relevant keywords? They’d cost you a fortune.

To build thousands of backlinks all you have to do is write articles, and distribute them to web sites related to your industry.

Backlinks are Organic

Companies pay millions of dollars for pay-per-click advertising that show their ads at the top of search pages for their keywords. At first, this was brilliant because the average web surfer thought that top ad was really just the most relevant return on their search.

These days the secret is pretty much out. Most people now know those top results are really ads. Most people now look directly to the true, or organic search results.

Backlinks build your relevancy, which in turn raises your page rank. The higher your site ranks, the higher your site appears in actual search results. A top 10 ranking, or PR10, puts your site on the first results page. You’re easy to find.

Backlinks from articles are the right kind of backlinks.

You could build lots of backlinks by doing a link exchange, but that’s a bad idea. A link exchange is you putting a link to another site on your site in exchange for the other site linking back to you. That’s no good because you want thousands of link coming in to your site. If your outgoing links equal or exceed the number of links coming in your relevancy is lost.

Link exchange sites are often not considered credible, and Google and other search engines do not consider them as relevant as an industry web site or blog. Link exchanges will do far more damage to your backlink program than good.

So, you can see just how powerful backlinks really are. Don’t be fooled by pay-per-click, SEO, etc. If you want qualified sales leads, write articles, distribute them, and build as many backlinks as possible.

Your buyers will come to you in droves.

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