Linking is Queen

Linking requires more research. Look up your competitions site on Google by typing in: link: http://www.competitorsdomain.com/ into search box (replace competitorsdomain with URL of your competitor). Now search results you will be looking at is a list of all sites that are linking to your competitor. Go through that list, and for each site, figure out how he got that link. Some links might be paid for, some might be link exchanges, some might be directories like dmoz.org or Yahoo, and others might be references or testimonials. Make a spreadsheet with each site linking to your competition, and jot down how he got link. Then, for each site that is appropriate, get it to link to you. Remember to stay away from link farms and low quality links. Link farms are sites that have nothing but links. Low quality links are sites with little to no content. These sites will often try to exchange links with you: Don't do it! Only link to a site if it will enhance user experience of your clients.

For more about linking, see my article entitled Linking is Queen (http://www.redcarpetweb.com/promotion/0409.html#feature)

Royal Success

Getting links takes time and patience, and writing is not usually done overnight. To top it off, once these projects are done, you then have to wait for search engines to discover and re-evaluate your site. Both link campaign and writing projects should be something done on a regular basis, not as a one-shot injection. Try to create new pages every month, and to get some links every month. That way your site will make gradual climb to top. And who doesn't want that?

The trading or bartering of links between two related sites. "If you put my link on your homepage, I will put your link on mine". To this day, still very effective, but....

Google caught on.

Google decided this was good. Lot's of good sites linking to each other BUT, this link schema isn't quite as good as if site A, linked to site B, without site B linking back, so Google 'DEVALUED' links, not 'PENALIZED' them.

People caught on.

Now people are buying links to their sites from any other sites that have high pr. Thus giving them a one way link and a PR transfer. Not a bad idea, but...

Google caught on.

Google is thinking, "Now why in world would this quality PR8 web hosting site have a text link to this PR2 Viagra site? Pretty easy answer huh? So Google 'DEVALUED' this type of link.

People caught on.

Now people are buying RELATED links on RELATED sites. This is good!

Personally I see nothing wrong with this, and I don't think Google does either. This is called 'Advertising', and it is a common, normal, honest form of advertising and marketing for your site. If you look back to very beginning of internet, and first example I gave you, this is almost identical. The only difference is that back then, most people linked to you for free, today, you have to pay.

Does that make all of other link building techniques worthless? NOT AT ALL! It just means those types of links aren't as valuable, so it will just take more of them to create same effect.

Well, I am hoping you see my point here? I could go on forever on this subject. The main point is that webmasters need to understand difference between something being 'DEVALUED', and something being 'PENALIZED'.

Being penalized for something is when you are doing something bad, wrong, illegal, or immoral.

Being devalued, just means that topic in question is being saturated, and is no longer rare or unique. In order to keep competition and honesty, there needs to be a new and better means developed to maintain an edge.

So next time your site drops in rankings at Google, before you scream 'Penalty', make sure that Google just didn't tweak their algo to devalue your technique.