The Market Coalition

January 2009
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Getting links to your website all over the Internet is one of your best methods to get a higher ranking in the search engines. The reason for this is the more links you have, the more popular you are in the eyes of the search engines, and as a result you will be rewarded with a higher relevancy ranking than other websites with fewer links. So, what you want to do is joint venture with as many other websites as possible and get your links out on the Net. This will increase your traffic and ultimately your revenue, so it is certainly worth your while to put some serious effort into reciprocal linking. Follow these suggestions on how you can get started with reciprocal link exchanges and win the link popularity contest.

Tip #1 Find Quality Sites

The first thing you should do when it comes to reciprocal linking is research. You want to find some really high quality sites that already rank well and that target the same market as your website. These sites should not be in direct competition with your site, they should be related in some way. The reason it is important to find sites that already have a lot of traffic is because the more traffic they have, the more people that will view your link and ultimately visit your site because of it. Of course, you can still get your site linked with less popular sites, but that should only be after you already are linked with some really popular sites.

Tip #2 Use the Personal Touch

When asking another website to link to your site, you need to make sure your site is worth linking to. For instance, if you still have pages under construction or is disorganized with no clear focus, no other site is going to want to link to you. So, first make sure you have a quality site. Then, write to the quality sites you located personally. You want to send a polite e-mail that compliments the other site and ask for a link. You should provide all of the information for your link including title, URL, description, and any information the webmaster will need to link to you. This will save the webmaster a lot of time and effort and he will be more likely to link to your site than if you do not provide this information.

Tip #3 Link First

In your personalized e-mail you should also mention that you have added a link to their site and give them instructions on where they can find it. When you link first followed by a link request, providing all the necessary information to post your link, you will significantly increase your chances of getting a reciprocal link. Also, give the other webmaster some time to get your link up. Check back in a week or two and if it still not up, simply send a gentle reminder e-mail. If your site is still not posted within a short period of time after that then simply remove the websites link from your website and keep moving. Remember, while obtaining links is your goal it might not be first on everyone’s list.

One of the best ways to optimize your business Web site for higher search engine placement is to increase the amount of other sites that link to you. Most search engines use the quantity and quality of links pointing to your site to determine how to rank your site. The more quality links pointing to your pages, the better your placement will be. And that means more traffic for your business.

Here is a way for other sites to link back to you.

Link Directories Link directories are the best way to get your website noticed and other people to link back to you. Website owners pay to have their link posted on other websites for the purpose of linking back to your website. Find websites that sell complementary products or provide content that is related to the product or service that you are offering.

Listing your business in Web directories can help connect buyers and sellers, and it has the same basic advantages as advertising in the traditional yellow pages. Some of those advantages include: attracting targeted customers, establish your brand, and providing your current customers with up to date information about your business. But online directories give you an even greater opportunity to sell products and services because they:

1. Allows you to attract targeted customers outside of your local area. Go nationwide, while staying local.

2. Let anyone with an Internet connection find your business quickly and easily, usually from the comfort of their own home.

3. Provide current and potential customers with maps, driving directions and an active link to your company’s Web site.

4. Give your company international exposure.

If you’re just starting out and your site doesn’t get a lot of traffic, you may not get a one-to-one trade; be prepared to make concessions, at least until you have a track record and traffic to point to. That said, there are still a few companies that won’t turn down an opportunity for more exposure, so you’ll probably find a few that are still willing to do a free link exchange with you. However, the number of website owners offering free link exchanges are dwindling.

Search engines are the gateway to the Internet; they are the first tool that potential customers use to find the products and services they need. This is why link popularity is so imperative. If the customers do not find your website, you have no possibilities of making any sales.

You’re probably wondering what the blazes is popular about a link! Well, in a word - plenty! Link popularity refers to the ranking assigned to your website by the search engines, and it determines the ranking your page gets when keywords are entered into a search engine. So, you’re probably wondering, how do I make my link popular?

Search engines are discretionary, giving status and ranking to sites that have links to their pages from related, quality sites. It’s a simple formula, but a very important one. Google created the system, and now virtually all the most popular search engines employ it to rank your web pages in their indexes.

The more commonly used your keyword is, the harder it will be to achieve link popularity, but without achieving this step, it is almost certain your site will never rank highly on any search engine. But don’t be discouraged; there are tried and true ways of achieving link popularity using the most competitive keywords.

There are a few things you should be aware of. The first is that just linking up with a large number of other websites will not achieve link popularity. In fact, it may have quite the opposite effect. This is particularly true when pertaining to websites that are nothing more than “link farms” - pages containing line after line of indiscriminate links. Search engines may aggressively discriminate against your website if you are associated with a link farm, so steer clear of them!

The next thing to bear in mind is the quality of the site you are linking to. Never link to a page you have reservations about your visitors seeing. The last thing you want your website to appear as is indiscriminate and cheap. Linking to sites of poor quality will only lessen your link popularity, if not completely destroy it.

So let’s get to what you need to do to achieve supreme link popularity and improve your rankings to stellar status on all the popular search engines.

The first step, and the fastest way to get your foot in the door, is to get a listing in a popular directory, such as Open Directory Project and Yahoo. If your site is business-related, you will want to be listed on Yahoo, and despite the fact that it will cost you around $300 a year, it will be money well spent. If your site is non-commercial, the listing will be free, but it will take time and follow-up to actually get it listed. Open Directory is gives you a free listing whether you are business-related or non-commercial, but be prepared to make a lot of follow-up inquiries before you see your site listed.

You are aiming to get listed in the highest level of appropriate category, and this just takes some common sense. For example, if your company ships Alpaca wool from an Alpaca farm located in the middle of Nowhere, Tiny State, do NOT submit your listing to “Retailers from Nowhere, Tiny State.” BIG MISTAKE! All you have to do is look a little deeper - and submit your listing to the “Fine Alpaca Wool” category. You will not only associate yourself with culture and quality, but you will be listed in a national category.

To continue to PART 2 Click here.

This article may be freely reprinted as long as all links and author information remain.

Did you get tired one day from everybody’s continual insistence
that the Internet would revolutionise the way companies do
business? Therefore, to ‘get with the times’ you hired a
company to produce a tasteful, professional and up-to-date
website. You integrated it with your backend accounting and
financial systems so people could order products directly from
the website. You then sat back and waited for the cash to roll
in, right?
Now raise your hand if it didn’t turn out to
be that simple.
In the mad rush to get something (and
anything) onto the Internet, companies made the leap unprepared.
Many businesses forgot to ask one simply question: How will
customers actually find our website?
Since you literally
share the Internet with another million websites, it is an
important question. Being a perceptive marketing person, you
realise there are four ways Internet users typically locate your
site:

Learning it from traditional media such as TV,
print, radio, brochures, business cards etc.
Link from
another website
Recommended by someone
Found
using a Search Engine (SE) such as Google, Yahoo!, MSN etc.

You only have major control over the first method -
throw enough money into advertising and everyone will know about
the site. You can even buy links from other websites such as the
Yellow Pages. For companies that don’t have the marketing budget
of a large multi-national corporation, the fourth method is the
only real manner of attracting new visitors.
To make SEs
a viable method, your website must appear in the top ten search
results. Why? Nine out of ten Internet surfers do not go past
the first 30 search results. Many do not even proceed further
than the top 10 results.
How do you get your website into
the top 10? An industry has arisen with the means and knowledge
to answer this question. The process they employ is generalised
as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).
SEO is a methodology
(some would argue art) employed to improve a website’s rank in
SE results given targeted ‘keywords’. Keywords are the
phrase(s) your target market uses to limit search results to
locate your product or services. For example, you want your
website to have a high rank when someone searches for
‘ipod accessories’; but you don’t really care if it rates
highly for ‘tropical fish’ - that is not your target. /> The key to this industry lies in the fact that SEs are
actually very limited software programs. They don’t have the
intelligence to understand everything they see on the Internet.
They use ever-evolving rules to score and rate a website’s
ability to answer a particular question. Armed with this
knowledge, we can break the SEO process into three general
categories:

HTML code optimisation:
The first stage is the checking, and re-writing if necessary, of
navigation and content structures on your website. SEs do not
understand objects such as images, Flash, JavaScript etc. They
will simply ignore them. There is no point proceeding any
further if the SE cannot understand what it is seeing.
Programmers undertake this category of SEO. A deep understanding
of current web coding standards and techniques is necessary.
Software packages often produce very poor results, and it
usually takes a lot of human intervention to ensure optimum
accessibility.
Content tailoring: A SE
rates web pages according to their relevancy given a set of
keywords. You must therefore tailor your content with these
keywords in mind at all times. Fundamental to determining which
keywords are relevant is an understanding of your target market.
You must know the typical questions they ask to find answers.
There are websites such as WordTracker (www.wordtracker.com)
that can help you to determine commonly used keywords.
Remember: this is not a race to see how many keywords can fill
the page. There is an optimum keyword density. Too dense and it
is considered stuffing or spamming - you will be penalised. Too
little, and you are not considered an authoritative source.
Choosing to hone in on a specific set of keywords per page is
also prudent. You are not trying to optimise for everybody on
the Internet - only those who ask a specific question.
Cutting-edge optimisation: SEs use
algorithms that are proprietary secrets and continually evolve
over time. Categories 1 and 2 focus on making your website
accessible to SEs and ensuring you have high quality content.
These are well-established principles guaranteed to improve your
rankings - regardless of how the SE algorithms advance.
To give their clients an advantage, SEO practitioners can
sometimes try to abuse the SE algorithms. They may take
advantage of loopholes or shady methods. A simple example is
‘stuffing’ a page with invisible text - white text on a
white background. This is invisible to humans, but SEs used to
index this content. If taken one-step further by stuffing the
page with unrelated (but popular) keywords, it becomes
‘spamming’. SEs are smarter today and will notice these
devious tricks. Websites using them will be heavily penalised.

Category 3 is a moving target - and hence carries risk if
poorly executed. What works today is innovative, but may be
heavily penalised in the future once people abuse it to skew
results. You should always be wary of introducing any
initiatives that fall into this category.

So
if you decide to give your site the SEO treatment, how long
before you see the results?
Google re-indexes websites
everyday of the year. The process it follows ensures every entry
in its database is re-indexed every 4-6 weeks. Google will
re-index ‘news’ sites much quicker - almost daily - to
stay current. Other SEs use roughly similar periods between
re-indexes. Therefore it can take up to 4-6 weeks for changes in
the ranking to be observed.
Will the three categories in
SEO improve your ranking? Yes. Will they keep you there? No. The
SE algorithms evolve over time. SEO is a form of marketing and
is therefore an on going process of monitoring, obtaining
feedback and tweaking. Most companies do not release a ton of
advertising material with getting feedback as to how they can
improve it in the future.
Please remember that SEO is not
the ultimate and final word on creating a profitable web
presence. It is only one aspect of your Internet marketing
strategy. A good SEO practitioner understands this. They realise
that there is more to the Internet than just search engines.
Obtaining links from reputable websites, advertising using
traditional media and ensuring your customers recommend you to
their friends is just as important. If they don’t reflect this
in their overall strategy, consider someone else who does. />
For more information on this topic, please visit our
SEO
information page, where can you download an extended version
of this article, including a Search Engine Optimisation
Whitepaper.

Blogging has been practiced for years. But it’s just recently that it has been considered as one of the addicting fads. Many people have resorted to blogging as an outlet for their emotions, a little online nook where they can blurt out whatever just bugs them or whatever makes them feel elated. Savvy marketers have also discovered that blogging is one of the best Internet marketing methods that won’t break your bank account.

Just what exactly is blogging? Blog is the widely used term that refers to web log. In a nutshell, a blog is like an online journal. A blog could be set up to no cost at all, and can be used for just for the fun of it or most importantly for business reasons.

Blogging for your Internet business is one surefire and easy way to boost the visibility of your products and services. Here are a few ways to boost your internet advertising with the help of a blog:

1. Make your clients or customers abreast on your website’s alterations. Your new services, products and affiliate websites could also be announced through your blog.

2. Share your opinions, advice or reviews on specific services or products that are related to your business. Publishing is a very easy process with blogging.

3. Keep track of your business objectives and plans through open writing. Your blog content can be easily stored through archives. What could be better than searchable information that could be easily accessed by anyone browsing the web, right?

4. Include links that will fetch back links and subsequently improve your ranking on search engines. This could be better executed through putting well-written articles in your website. Affiliate links could also be included in your blog to earn additional income.

5. Collect response through the ability of blogs to fetch comments from your blog readers. You can learn and improve your products and services through the comments and feedback left by your readers.

6. Connect easily with other bloggers. When other bloggers notice that you have something good in your blog, they will put you in their favorite lists that will automatically link you to their blogs.

So, how do you set up a blog? Here are some of the options you can make use of to take advantage of this fun way to advertise your Internet business.

Either you load a blogging software or let a blogging hosting service do it for you. Host services such as LiveJournal and Blogger.com are the most popular in this field. Those hosts will provide you with easy instructions on how to put up your blog easily.