Reciprocal Linking – Give And You Shall Receive
I think it is a given that the route to search engine placement lies in your link popularity.
The Page 1 of Google spot that we all desire, will depend on the number of links pointing at your site with the requisite anchor text matching the keywords for the term that you want to be found under.
The talk is all about how to achieve the thousands of links that it is becoming increasingly necessary to have so as to attain the heights of a competitive keyword placement.
Many voices decry the oldest and most used form of attaining links; reciprocal linking.
The practice of, I will link to you if you link to me, has been devalued by many, (especially the one-way link brokers who would much prefer you pay for your links).
Well I am adding my voice against the tide of sceptics to say that reciprocal linking does work. There is, however, a right way and a wrong way to do it.
The fact is, that when Google envisaged the link popularity route to search result placement, I am sure they didn’t think they would end up spidering and caching millions upon millions of webpages of irrelevant links pages.
It must take up an awful lot of time and space to sift through the computer manufactured pages of irrelevant directories that place links three or four clicks away from a homepage. These link pages are destined never to receive pagerank and offer no real value to your site.
The key to good quality reciprocal links lies in relevance and value.
As a new website with no page rank this may seem a daunting task. Increasingly you come across sites that will only offer a link exchange if you have a Pagerank of 3 or higher.
The way to combat this is to give value in other ways. The saying ‘Give and ye shall receive’ certainly holds true when it comes to reciprocal linking.
So how does a new site give value?
1. Make your resources pages relevant.
When you are designing the main pages of your website, great care is taken with the factors that determine your search engine placement.
The title, meta description, url and content are all important.
So why is it that you see so many websites with a resources or links page with these factors ignored.
If you want to gain a link from a site dealing with ‘Spanish property’ for instance. Which of these two options would you think might gain a positive response.
Site 1
Page Title: Links Resources
Content: None,(apart from a form to fill out for reciprocal linking)
URL: xyz.co/links.htm
Or
Site 2
Page Title: Spanish Property Resources
Content: Welcome to xyz.co’s Spanish Property Resource page. We have listed below sites that are relevant to the Spanish Property Industry. Although we take no responsibility for their content we have
vetted them to ensure they contain information you may find relevant to the Spanish Property market.
URL: xyz.co/spanish-property-resources
I hope the point is made.
Some other points to also note;
Keep your links pages no more than 2 clicks from your homepage.
Target associated industries in the same way as above.
Don’t be afraid to offer a homepage link to obtain a good PR ranked page link. Doing this offers the mature site the potential for future value and should receive a favorable response.
Reciprocal linking DOES work. I took a new site to a PR6, Page 1 on Google for major keywords using quality reciprocal linking as the base in just 11 months. There are a few other things you will need to do to emulate this feat, but get your reciprocal linking right and you will be off to a good start.
Neil Ebsworth is co-founder of http://www.amlaspain.com , a Spanish property portal for the Real Estate industry in Spain.
Boost Traffic Generation with Content Articles
In order to attract swarms of traffic, writing content articles works wonders. For starters, achieving a top ranking in search engine results requires that your link be distributed throughout the web on other websites. Search engines place a major emphasis on link popularity, or the frequency in which your site’s link appears on other websites. By writing articles, you increase exposure.
Through writing articles, you increase the popularity of your website. Strewn throughout the web are pages designed exclusively to make Google AdSense profits. Webmasters across the globe are registering domains, writing 20-30 pages of informative content on any given topic, and plastering their Google ads to generate profit off of impressions and click-throughs. Not only can you make a profit, but your traffic will increase tenfold. By adding keyword-rich text to your pages, you trigger the search engines into indexing more of your website. Slowly but surely, your written content will climb search engine rankings. Add depth and focus on quantity of articles: the more articles your site has, the better chance of your site being added to the search engines.
Crafting informative articles for web content will create a solid base for link popularity. Other websites of interest who want to distribute their links as well will be interested in linking back to your website. Remember, the more your link appears on the Web, the higher your Google ranking. In addition, you will become an authoritative figure for the topic you write about. That Ferrari fan will return again and again if your article on Lamborghini engines piques their interest. Search engines pay more attention to websites that are informative and have the right mix of keywords involved to trigger them.
If you’re a solid writer, you may also become a guest writer for other websites. Tap into your viral marketing prowess by adding your name and a link back to your website at the bottomof every article. Not only will you establish yourself as an authoritative figure and lure visitors, but you’ll also reap the rewards with free website traffic. Increase your visibility in as many websites as possible besides your own with content articles.
If you’re providing content to your site each and every day, applaud yourself. The search engine spiders automatically give preference to those sites that include fresh content every day. If you own a blog for example, and incorporate it into your website, search engines will pay more attention. Have poor writing skills? You can hire freelance writers to write articles for you, for as low as $5 per 300 word article. Helping hands are available at freelance sites like elance.com and guru.com.
As the popular Internet saying goes, “content is King!”
Ryan Smith is the owner of http://www.mycirclepal.com/ and Hot Web Ring, which offers high quality traffic for free! Find out more at http://www.hotwebring.com
E-Learning: Education from your Desktop
One of the newsiest trends in business learning is the e-learning craze that is sweeping the Internet. This is a recent innovation that allows for users to learn new information from a variety of fields right from their own PC. Available in CD-rom or online form, consumers can learn about anything from health care to accounting through these courses. Courses can be measured in hours or weeks, depending on the content and the level of study. Generally, students of these courses can choose to be part of an instructor led (directed) or self led (self paced) course.
E-learning courses allow students to learn in a more convenient environment than classroom courses and gives them the ability to do so at their own speed. Since there are no classrooms there are no class times, allowing students to control when and where they learn. In fact, in some cases it is possible to by-pass information that the student may already know allowing them to move on to all new material. Quizzes, demos and exercises are included and some may contain encyclopedias or glossaries for easy reference. Also, a few courses may offer the ability to connect with other “classmates” to ask questions or get together and study.
Business, along with technology, is one of the most popular topics among e-learning courses. Found online at business resource sites such as Amanet or Thomson Gale’s Goliath, these can be used to jump start a business with information on how to run businesses and the latest trends in the business world. New employees can be trained easily through these courses, eliminating the need to use training teams on such activities. If a business is already up and running, e-learning courses can be used to improve it by sharpening old skills and adding new ones. Business courses can also be utilized to bring together different areas of a company and make sure that all divisions are on the same page.
Due to the growth of e-learning courses, many online e-learning magazines have been set up. On these sites one can find columns on e-learning products, current e-learning trends, interviews with big names in the e-learning industry, and analysis of current products and services. Also, users are kept up to date on conferences and seminars focusing on e-learning. Users may be provided with material to research different e-learning courses in order to assess what would be best suited for them. Discussion boards and newsletters also provide a place for user feedback.
Each site may be specific to a certain type of e-learning course, but most are open to all genres. Product demos are available on some to give users a chance to test out products before they buy them. Also, tutorials may be made available so that users can know how to use a program before they receive it. Sites offer tips on where problem areas occur in e-learning programs and how to fix them, as well as links to different program providers. A final helpful part of these e-learning sites are blogs devoted to explaining e-learning products. These blogs provide editorial comments on e-learning products and answer blogger’s questions concerning products and usage. Using these sites in conjuncture with the e-learning programs will allow for a fulfilling experience from student who can now gain new knowledge in a quick, easy way.
Sarah Deak is a contributing business writer for http://goliath.ecnext.com. Goliath is one of the Internet’s largest collections of business research, news and information.
The Business Aspect Of Training Through Video
A major cost overhead, not only in terms of direct money but also for man-hours lost in the process is staff training. Video courses also called training videos help you offset this cost to a large extent.
Also imagine when a company has a wide spread business interests all around the globe and the man power and audience is culturally diverse, it can become prohibitively expensive to send experienced trainers all over or to pay for each individual to attend training courses. Video training courses can educe these costs dramatically at the same time making content delivery faster to anyone around the globe.
Video courses can be made and presented in many ways they can be a series of specially filmed programmes or they could be films of training seminars that have already occurred which could be edited into video form so as to replicate the benefits of these seminars on a mass scale. Once the filming and editing is over, training videos can be delivered in the form of a CD-ROM for computer based presentations or a VHS and DVD for television presentations. Video courses are often a part of an overall training programme to be planned and delivered according to the needs of the company.
Video courses are often used for induction training programmes for new staff and most people would get to see at least one during their professional life. However they are also used for various other purposes.
Lets assume the company as introduced a new product in the product line, the video training program becomes the ideal and most cost effective way to give out product information, and more importantly so, when the product is highly technical like software. The same process if done manually may take weeks if not months for a multi national corporation with diversely geographical business spanning continents. If we take into consideration the time taken for the manual training program and calculate the costs involved due to loss of man power, the figures would be incredible and preposterous compared to the cost of a video course used for training. Moreover the training retention of the employees is better by video than thru manual means, which renders them more efficient and professional. These two pronged advantages will subsequently bring better results to the company in the future.
Video courses can also be used to train staff about new policies, health or safety issues and any other internal information of the company that needs to be gotten across.
Video training has long been recognized as one of the most valuable teaching medium because it conveys more effectively, the instructor’s clues like gestures, facial expressions and posture that aid effective communication. Decades of valuable research has proved that body language is the single most important element in verbal communication.
Besides the savings in training costs, there are various other reasons to develop procedure videos for your company. The very process of making such a video course may provide invaluable insight into the operations of your company’s business.
Roz is the co-founder of FavCart.com. Visit: http://www.bizintellects.com where you will be able to benefit from business intelligence topics and content.