Get The Links Indexed! It doesn't do you any good to set up links if search engines never find them. You can submit pages that link to you, but most search engines nowadays won't index them unless there are other links to those pages somewhere on web. Consider adding a "resources" page to your site, linked from your home page, with links to all individual pages that link to you.

How To Make Sure Your Links Get Indexed In order to ensure that links pointing to your site get indexed, you really have to take an additional step, and set up a second domain and website. The gardening website in above example might need a partner site like "gardening-resources.com" with a single page pointing to all links pages you've set up.

Once you've set up secondary domain, add a link to it from your main site's home page, and wait for search engines to index it. Don't forget to link back to your primary site, of course - not just your home page, but any content pages as well. You should submit this additional site to same directories that you use to list your primary site.

It also helps to ask for an additional link to your secondary domain when you set up links swaps. Just explain how secondary site helps both partners, by adding link popularity and helping links pages get indexed. Any sensible webmaster will gladly add second link.

What Happens Now? As link popularity of both of your sites grows, they begin to feed on each other. Don't neglect to track any search engine referrals to your secondary site - if they grow to a high level, you may want to turn it into more than just a links page. If you've done a good job of optimizing your primary site, though, chances are your secondary site will never outrank your primary site on any search.

If you take these initial steps today, and commit to a program of link building for ten minutes a day, your site's traffic will begin to rise dramatically within just 2-3 months, and it should only get better if you stick with program.

I wish you success.

will score better than: Garden tools, including compost makers, rakes, shovels and more for term “compost makers.”

Keep in mind though, that this second example will score better on searches for term “garden tools” which is searched on 70 times more frequently than “compost makers.” You need to know what terms people are actually using to search for sites like yours. How to do that is subject of another article, but easiest method is still Overture’s (formerly Goto’s) tool, (currently located at http://inventory.overture.com/inventory/searchInventory.mp) Make sure that if you’re going to go to all work to rank high against a specific search term, that it’s one that people are actually using to search for your site!

It’s vital for you to not only know what you are truly selling, but also what is being searched on in your category.

4. Other factors. Every search engine applies certain weights to certain site criteria and change those weightings frequently. At moment, Yahoo is doing that in several areas, which may change:

A. Placement in Yahoo’s categories. Yahoo has not abandoned their old category structure, just changed way they list search results. They currently seem to be giving higher rankings to those sites that are categorized under top category for a given search term rather than lower priority categories.

B. Giving more weight to hyphenated URL’s than non-hyphenated URL’s with same keywords. Thus (everything else being equal) http://compost-makers.com would score better than http://compostmakers.com. This is especially true if keyword is not first element in URL: http://best-compost-makers.com would score better than http://bestcompostmakers.com.

C. Penalizing sites that have numbers or early-in-the-alphabet letters before keyword (probably in reaction to those who tried to beat their old alphanumeric ranking system): http://1compostmakers.com probably won’t even show up in first several pages of their listing.

D. Not differentiating between .com’s, .net’s, .org’s, etc. This opens up opportunities to achieve top rankings through purchasing alternative domains to .com standby. (Caution we have no idea how new .info, .biz etc. domains will fare in Yahoo’s new structure, so approach these with caution).

Several key issues are not yet clear at Yahoo: 1. There is no indication of popularity or link popularity affecting rankings. Yahoo is tracking click-throughs so it won’t be surprising to see popularity affecting rankings in near future. Link popularity may be farther out, as Yahoo isn’t currently spidering sites, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see an acquisition or licensing deal in future.

2. There are several thousand sites that are paying extra to be listed at top of category pages as sponsored sites. Yahoo has now significantly decreased value given to those paying partners by shunting as much as 75% of their search traffic off of category pages and into their search pages. They stand to lose millions of dollars in sponsorship revenues in next few weeks if they don’t quickly find a way to bring those sponsored links onto search results pages in addition to their category pages.

All of these changes are vital for internet marketers to understand. Not only will they most likely result in additional traffic to Yahoo, but for those who understand these changes it can yield major benefits of extra traffic, sales and profits!