Link Exchange Traffic

Internet Marketing – Linking Isn’t Dead–Not Completely

Article by Tellman H Knudson

When Google put the smackdown on several prominent sites last month,the Chicken Littles of Internet marketing were running aroundscreaming, “Linking is dead! Linking is dead!” Well, they’re wrong.Linking isn’t breathing it’s last rattles. It’s alive and well, and canstill please the Google ghods, if done the right way.

What happened to those site you mentioned? you’re wondering. We’ll getto that in a minute, but for now, let’s talk about the ways you canstill get quality links pointing back to your website that will make asearch engine difference.

One-way linking is the linking of choice. That means one website linksto another, but there is no linking back. The link only goes in onedirection. This is the kind of linking that Google wants to see. Theycall it natural linking because one webmaster sees something on anothersite that they’re interested in offering or showing to their readers orcustomers, and the linking just happens. To Google, this is good.

Another form of linking is reciprocal linking. This occurs when onewebsite links to another and the second site links back to the first.It’s a kind of link exchange. These were all the rage last year, andwith places like Link Marketing and Link Metro, it was pretty simple todo. Though reciprocal linking is still OK, the links had better berelevant to your niche. This type of linking isn’t as SEO beneficial,but it still works. It just takes a lot of energy and doesn’t bring thesame results in Internet marketing as it used to.

Yet, one-way links aren’t as hard to get as you might imagine.

You can list your website in prominent directories, like DMOZ (the OpenDirectory Project), or Yahoo. These are respected directories becausehuman editors actually evaluate each site that is submitted forapproval. Google will still count these links. However, directoriesthat are what Google considers to be “link farms” and have no humaneditors are a waste of time. Those links won’t even be counted. You mayget some traffic from them, but check to see how much traffic thedirectory gets before wasting your time.

Blog commenting may become popular again with the advent of the “DoFollow” plugin for WordPress. With version 1.5, WordPress decided thatthere was too much spam commenting going on in blogs, and included a”no follow” attribute to be placed on all comments automatically. Itdidn’t stop spam, but it stopped blog comments from giving you anyone-way links. Recently, a new plugin called “Do Follow” allows blogowners to permit comments on their blogs to be followed by searchengine spiders. One way to tell if a blog owner has this plugin or notis by using an add-on for Firefox, called “Search Status,” which turnsall links that have the “no follow” attribute pink.

You can also make forum posts and get backlinks to your site, as longas the forums you post in are relevant to your Internet marketingniche. Make sure that you use anchor text in your signature file, ifallowed, which means to use one of your keyword phrases and link itback to your website. When you do this, the spiders will follow. Justbe sure that if you’re in the golf niche that you’re posting relevantand helpful posts in a golf forum. Otherwise, the links won’t mean muchto Google at all.

So, what was the big Google smackdown? It was paid linking, whichoccurs when you pay someone to put your link on their website or theypay to get a link on yours. Sites that bought or sold links were givena page rank demotions.

This doesn’t mean that linking is dead or that there are still greatways to get one-way links pointing back to your website. You just haveto know how to do it, and you have to keep within your niche. Doinganything else is a huge waste of your Internet marketing time andenergy. But just because linking isn’t as simple as it was a year ago,that doesn’t mean it’s not still a worthwhile endeavor.

About the Author

Tellman Knudson is CEO of Overcome Everything, Inc. and a master of Internet marketing and list building. You can pick up his free CD, a Free month in The List Building Club, and a one-on-one consultation.Get more information regarding internet marketing.