The shortest way to a text link ads success

By Grojan Fabiola

Since Google appeared, and became the most popular and frequently used search engine, things changed in the 'search engine industry', because the web sites began to be ranked after the number of sites that linked to them. It appears that Google considers every link that points to one site a vote for it.

Then, the 'link placing industry' appeared, text link ads began to be bought and sold, but this was not what Google was planning, So the search engines started to filter the sites, trying to separate the ones with paid text links from the ones which 'earned' them

It is of course,much easier to give a high ranking to your site (the number of links pointing to one site determines that site's 'page ranking' ,which is very important for the search engines) with paid text link ads, then to do search engine optimization. Text links are very popular these days, because they raise a web site's page rankings, but the fact that text link ads are becoming an industry spoils the results. Text link brokerage appeared, and if one wants to place text link ads pointing to his site, he can contact one of these brokers, or talk to the site owners.

Text links successfully blend the content, 'story' , of a site with advertisements, mixing the text with the ads, unlike the too common 'click here' banners. Every word in an article from a web page can become an ad now, a link to a web site. Some of these text links can be 'dangerous', because they can hijack the page you are looking at, when you click on them, or they can say that they take you to a site, but in fact they take you to a totally different one...

It is very hard to tell if bought text link ads are a good or a bad thing, because they have both advantages and disadvantages, maybe the will disappear, because the search engines filters are becoming more and more thorough, but for now the are really important in boosting a web site's rankings.

About the Author
You can call this a marketing article, althought link building forms a very important part from marketing. Groshan Fabiola is writing different articles with many various themes from marketing, link building, even agriculture or finance. If you want to fin out more about text link ads , please click this link.

Multiple Methods for Cultivating Inbound Links to your Website

By Bill Platt

UNDERSTANDING THE VALUE OF INBOUND LINKS ON YOUR WEBSITE

Besides search engines, the next most common way people move from one website to another is through links on other sites.

The reason that the Internet is often refered to a the "Web" is because it exists so much as a web of links running from one site to another in a maze more complex than the spider web from which it is named.


GETTING YOUR LINKS ON OTHER SITES

If you submit your site to search engines, provided you get good results on the keywords being searched for, you will get good results.

If you write articles that will be published by ezine publishers and webmasters, then the externally placed links to your website through your resource box can be very profitable. The resource box is an "about the author" paragraph, that you will attach at the end of your article.

If you are willing to share a certain amount of your profits with others, you can set up an affiliate program for your offerings, and then you can rely upon your affiliates to provide your inbound links for you.

If you participate in online forums dedicated to a certain topic, then your links placed with your signature can be very effective.

If you leave reviews for others to read on sites like Amazon or Cnet, then you will find a certain number of click-through's (CTR's) to your website.

If you sign guestbooks with your own link in place, you might be a little disappointed by your results.

If you use Free For All (FFA) pages, you will certainly be disappointed. The reason for the failure with FFA pages is two-fold. First, your link will be placed on an external site that rotates links. Your link may only be in place for ten minutes or two hours. Secondly, your link is often placed on a page that will likely never be seen by human eyes.


THE YIN AND THE YANG OF THE INTERNET

The Internet is a prime example of the benefits of the Yin and the Yang. What goes around, comes around.

The truth is that if you help others, others will help you.

If you provide outbound links on your site to resources that are not on your site, people will flock to your site to find the resources they are looking for.

What is more, if you provide a good resource to others, then webmasters, reviewers and publishers will be lining up to tell their people about your website. Thus, giving you more inbound links.


BEWARE THE DEAD END

If on the other hand, you construct your website as a dead end, you are bound to fail.

People who do website reviews and publish ezines do not tell their followers about dead end sites. The value of a single website is drastically reduced by a lack of outbound links.

After all, no one person is so brilliant that they can deliver everything their visitors want.

By the very nature of dead end sites, they will not be linked to by others, so their success or failure is entirely reliant upon search engine and email success.

If the owner of the dead end site does not send out tons of email advertising and it does not have good placement in the search engines, then the site will not turn big profits.


GOOGLE PAGERANK (PR)

Besides traffic earned by inbound and outbound links to a website, one should also consider ranking schemes like the Google.com PageRank scheme.

Because Google wants to provide their users the very best in information from their search results, Google employs a program called the Google PageRank. The basic premise is to provide a rating for a given website, based in part on the value of the content on the website, and more so, based on how many external sites with a PageRank of four or higher actually link to the given website.

To review the Google PR for any one domain, one must use the Google Toolbar ( http://toolbar.google.com ) in their Internet Explorer browser.


INBOUND LINKS ARE CRUCIAL

In order for a site to get a good Google PageRank, the site must have inbound links from other rated sites.

Let us return for a moment to the dead end site. We have already shown that the dead end site that has no outbound links, will very likely have few inbound links, if any.

When a site can boast of no inbound links, then the webmaster can rest assured that their likelihood of getting a good Google PageRank or decent Google Ranking is almost nil.

In order to build one's inbound links, they should strongly consider employing outbound links also.


PROTECTING YOUR INTERNET ASSETS

Most people who build dead end sites do so from a fear of sending their hard earned traffic to another domain.

Given the short attention span of many surfers, we always have to be concerned that redirected traffic may never return to our websites.

In order to protect your hard work and losing the distracted surfer, you should always place a target="_blank" inside of the href tag for all outbound links on your websites.

This ensures that a person who clicks on an outbound link will see the new page in a new browser window. So, once the surfer has reviewed the new site, they will have to actively shut down the browser window that your website still resides in.

This is extra special good news for people who have provided a great resource for web surfers. The more valuable a website is considered to be as a resource, the more likely that the web surfer will bookmark the website for future use.


BROKEN LINKS ARE NO GOOD

Some people have ventured to provide reviews of external sites or to publish articles that are targeted to their marketplace, but they have provided the information with broken links to the external sites.

This method serves no real protection for the webmaster, since the search engine spiders and publishers know that all of the outbound links return a "404 error, page not found."

A phony resource is not really a resource at all.


BUILDING YOUR INBOUND LINKS

To ensure the success of your website, you need to get to work building both your inbound and outbound links for your website.

Remember. What goes around comes around. Honor will bring you many rewards.

About the Author
Bill Platt is the owner of http://thePhantomWriters.com
Bill has been a major player in the reprint article distribution industry since 2001. Bill owns a large number of the email article distribution channels that are used to send articles to publishers and webmasters who are seeking reprintable content. Many of his resources have been available since early 2001.

Making Valuable Contacts Online

Remember the old saying: "it's not what you know, it's who you know"? It's true. Your contacts determine whether your business succeeds or fails, and for reasons of credibility, that's doubly true online.

Many people bristle when someone suggests that they network. If the term networking puts you off, then think of it as making friends. People do business with people they know, and your prospective clients need to hear your name many times before they buy from you.

Networking should be a cornerstone of your business. As my marketer friend Sally says: "Networking makes all your business activities more effective."

Sally loves using the Internet to develop new contacts. She believes that you can establish business relationships more easily online than you can offline. "I'd rather have someone email me a proposal, than phone me. And if I'm the one creating the proposal, I'll do a Web search on their business before I email them. The more you know about them the more effective your initial contact will be. I'm flattered if I know that someone has taken the time to find out about our business before they contact me for the first time."

=> Making new contacts step by step

With several hundred million people online, no matter how tiny your niche market, you'll find it easy to make contacts online. Some of these contacts will be people who are in the same business you're in, others will be suppliers, or prospective clients.

Note: some people hesitate to make contact with competitors. When I suggested to a copywriting student of mine that she should contact local copywriters to see they were charging, she freaked out. She didn't want to have anything to do with her competition.

This is a short-sighted attitude, because:

* whatever your business, it's a small world. People know people, and people talk. If people know you because they've had some contact with you, then when they're asked about you, they're more apt to speak kindly of you;

* you'll learn what's happening in your industry: who's hiring, who's landed a big new contract, and who's slow-paying;

* you've got someone to whom you can refer clients, if the clients want something that you can't provide (and with luck, your contacts will refer people to you);

* it's educational: you can swap techniques, suppliers, and shortcuts;

* and most importantly, you can find out what other local businesses are charging, and why.

So how do you start making valuable contacts online?

==> Step One: Do a search for people in the same business you're in

You'll need to know who's doing what you're doing. Check out their Web sites, bookmark their URL, and enter the names and contact details into your contact management program.

(Go to Better Whois, at (http://www.betterwhois.com/) to get the business owner's contact details.)

See whether they offer services or products which are complementary to yours. You might be able to form a loose partnership.

If it's appropriate, you could offer them a link on your Web site in return for a link on theirs. However, be careful with this. Don't go linking here, there and everywhere online for the heck of it. Ubiquitous linking makes it look as if you don't know what you're doing.

==> Step Two: In what fields do you want to expand your client base?

When looking for prospective clients, think in terms of industries or professions.

If many of your clients are doctors, perhaps you want to contact more doctors, or perhaps you want to contact dentists or lawyers.

If you're a writer, maybe you've been targeting health and fitness magazines. What other interests and knowledge do you have? Perhaps you once worked for a construction company. Trade magazines pay quite well, so investigate construction magazines. Enter the magazines into your database, and send the editors a letter or e-mail message introducing yourself.

==> Step Three: Budget time for networking

Networking won't pay off with instantly, and too much networking can eat up a lot of time. So make a networking schedule for yourself.

If you're working in your small business fulltime, budget half an hour or so every couple of days for networking, or put in an hour a week. If you're a part-timer, try to put in a couple of hours a month.

==> Step Four: Don't be put off by a lack of response

If you send an e-mail message, and don't get a response, don't take it badly. Like most other people, I've got a rapid-fire delete finger, and I'm sure that occasionally I delete a valuable message by mistake. Blame it on the spam circus that e-mail has become.

Don't badger people, but if you're not getting a response via email, send them a fax or a letter.

Start making online contacts today, and watch your business thrive!

Resource box: if using, please include

Veteran multi-published author and copywriter Angela Booth crafts words for your business -- words to sell, educate or persuade. E-books and e-courses for writers on Web site. FREE ezines for writers and small biz:
(http://www.digital-e.biz/)

Web Site Promotion - Are You Requesting Free Backlinks?

By Robert Fuess

Everyone who is trying to improve their web site's ranking wants backlinks. This is an essential ingredient to your web site promotion strategy. Some happen because the right person (a webmaster) stumbled across your web site and likes your content. But you can get many more links on other web sites pointing to yours - if only you ask them. One-way links (where they link to your page but you don't have to link back) are much more valuable to your web site promotion than link exchanges, and they often take the same amount of effort to obtain. Search engines rate these more heavily when evaluating your web site. These free backlinks can be obtained by politely asking the webmaster to make the addition of your web site resource.

Only if a webmaster requests a link exchange do I consider doing such. The web site promotion strategy I normally use is to start by asking for what I really want.

WHAT NOT TO DO:

Above all, courtesy and personal touch is a must with these emails. Don't make these requests appear too cold or canned. Don't be insistent or prideful.

GOOD WEB SITES TO REQUEST A FREE BACKLINK FROM:

Many times when you send out a request - even a polite one, you may get ignored. To minimize this scenario, use the following web site promotion trick: Find out who has given backlinks to your competitors. Then ask these webmasters to link to your web site. There are a few different tools out there that can help you with this. I would recommend using the backlink checker from Submit Express http://www.submitexpress.com/linkpop/ . You can also use it to monitor your web site, since you will seldom be notified if they do follow your suggestion and put in a link to your site. A good backlink checker is an essential tool for any webmaster interested in web site promotion.

FINDING WHO TO CONTACT:

Most web sites have a contact page or an email link to the webmaster. Search around.

(The following is assuming the web site you are researching is http:www.yourwebsiteurl.com )

Next try going to http://www.yourwebsiteurl.com/info.txt . This is an info page on the web site that many webmasters have. Also, try looking at Alexa information for their website. Many web sites have information on who to contact in their Alexa account. Here is the format. http://info.alexa.com/data/details?url=http://www.yourwebsiteurl.com/ You can click on this link and change the web site in the textbox at the top of this page.

If you still cannot find it, you could always make an educated guess. Many web sites follow webmaster@yourwebsiteurl.com or admin@yourwebsiteurl.com pattern for the webmaster. Also look for a "add your link" section or page. This may be on a links page or it may be elsewhere. If a web site has an established procedure for asking for backlinks you will always want to follow them. That is a courtesy they will expect.

WRITING THE EMAIL:

The subject of the email should make them want to read your email. Don't misrepresent the email purpose by pretending to be a long lost friend or say "Lottery Winner". No one likes to be duped. You may want to put a brief comment such as "I love your web site! May I ask you a question?". You want to attract their interest in a courteous manner and not look like you are being sneaky.

THE BODY OF THE EMAIL:

The first part of your email body should complement their web site somehow. Make this a couple of sentences. This is the most tailored part of the email. It also keeps your email from being thrown out automatically. Those who get a preview of the top 2-3 lines of an email will see a complement - and may to read further. If they don't read it, your web site promotion efforts will not work.

Then, you should let them know how you found their site (what search engine and what keywords you used). Many webmasters find this to be valuable information, since it tells them what is working for their own web site promotion.

THEN you should politely request the honor of a link to your web site. (Or you may suggest your website as an additional resource . . . if your website has good resources or tools.) TIP: Not all those you contact will understand the term backlink. Just use the term "link". And especially don't mention the phrase "free backlinks". You don't want to imply that they could or should charge for them.

When you email other webmasters asking for backlinks, you should include the following:

• The URL of where you want the link to go to
• The suggested text for the link. This would be what you want the link to look like to visitors on that web site. Make sure that it encourages people to visit your web site and appropriately represents what your site is about. Having a keyword phrase in here is good - if you think the webmaster will go for this.
• A suggested description for the link . They may use this next to the link or in the title attribute of the link.
• The suggested HTML for the link.
• The page you would like the link to be on. Normally this would be a relevant page to your product or service. Sometimes it is in their list of links on a separate links page. Only rarely will this be the home page.

The last part should thank them for their time and encourage them to contact you if they have any questions. This is a must! They did you the favor of reading the email.

In your signature, put your full name, your email address and your title (such as Webmaster).

THATS IT!

Ideally, I would recommend sending out the emails as you find the web sites. This keeps you from forgetting loosing interest in that site. Have fun with your web site promotion!

About the Author
Robert Fuess is a veteran website designer who specializes in making dynamic search engine optimized websites. San Luis Obispo Website Design | Free Teacher Websites