Getting quality inbound links takes a lot of effort. Quite a number of link exchanges have sprung up to make job easier for busy webmasters. Like a dating agency, you register and seek, or wait for suitors. Within 24 hrs, they arrive in droves. Wish that was end of story. Sadly, it is not, in my experience so far. Practically 100% of my suitors come from a different planet. Our sites are totally unrelated. What has financial freedom got to do with renting a holiday bed-sit in Acapulco? Well, it may come in handy for dreaming…

It makes me wonder, do these webmasters fire before they aim? What is purpose of link exchange by way? Let's go back in time…

Once upon a time, before Google made linking Holy Grail, links were simply additional resources for audience, on topics which are not core to theme of site, but complimentary. For example, a site on fish farming would feature links to sites that deal with fish food as a core theme etc.

Before adding links, Webmaster would have checked out site, see what it offers, and make a judgment based on best interest of his audience. “Does that site offer quality fish food?” He will check out fish food on offer. As a matter of fact, Webmaster can take it further and negotiate a discount for visitors from his site who may wish to buy fish food from that site. Then he can boldly say, "Recommended Link". This means he had taken time out to check out site, and certifies it fit for his audience. His "trust me" then comes from heart.

Nowadays, you see bold disclaimer notices on link pages. Something to this effect:

"Visit sites listed hereunder at your own risk. If you believe what you see on these sites, you are on your own. You have only yourself to blame".

Funny and sad; makes one wonder, if a site's content is deemed harmful to your audience, why link to it in first instance? If you have managed to gain trust of your audience as an expert in your field backed by integrity, why send them to a site you cannot vouch for?

Am I against link exchanges? NO!!!!!!!!!!!! I am for it. But I believe Webmaster should put on table, a tiny little bit of his name and integrity behind every link he features in his link pages. His audience should be able to relax a bit and drop their guard once they click on a link from their favorite site. Otherwise, I believe webmasters should weed off all links they cannot vouch for to some extent. You may not be able to take full responsibility for what stunts other Webmaster may pull, but you should be able to watch out for interest of your guests visiting that site, and yank of that site from your link pages (alongside warning folks that have already landed there) if you find out something questionable about that site, no matter how much traffic that site sends you or boosts you Google PageRank. That spells integrity.

Some "experts" recommend; "if you link to a guy and he does not link back to you, remove his link and move on". Hey! Are you saying if a site has content your audience may be dying to see, and Webmaster of that site does not feel like linking you, then no matter how good and valuable that site is, yank him off your link pages? What is issue here? Your ego or your audience? Who loses? Your audience of course!

This is part one of ten in this search engine positioning series. In part one we will outline how to choose keyword phrases most likely to produce a high ROI for your search engine positioning efforts. Over this ten part series we will go through ten essential elements and steps to optimizing a site. Some steps take a few hours, some may take months depending on competition, but in end and if done correctly you will have a well optimized site that will place well and hold it's positioning.

Of course all website's fluctuate up and down however well optimized sites will spend more time on upper end of rankings than poorly optimized or spammy sites which may see high rankings but which will lose those rankings over time.

The Ten Steps We Will Go Through Are:

1. Keyword Selection
2. Content
3. Site Structure
4. Optimization
5. Internal Linking
6. Human Testing
7. Submissions
8. Link Building
9. Monitoring
10. The Extras

Step One - Keyword Selection

Arguably, keyword selection is single most important stage in entire optimization process. If you do not choose correct keyword phrases you will not maximize your ROI on this campaign. I mention ROI and use it as a reminder that keyword selection is not necessarily about looking for most searched phrases. A profitable optimization is one which produces greatest return on investment for time and money that are available to put towards it.

Bigger Is Not Always Better

If you are a web designer in Seattle who has just started your own business, you could make "web design" targeted keyword phrase for your site as it certainly has highest number of searches with 707,962 in September 2004 according to "Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool". If you have thousands of dollars and many months to dedicated just to attaining those rankings it could be done however, would that be best use of your time? Alternatively you could target "seattle web site design" with 5,070 searches in September. A Google link check shows number of links for top three competitors for Seattle search had 132, 21, and 47 respectively whereas for "web design" top three had 18,700, 5,420, and 1,310 incoming links each.

With a good site you would get more work than you could handle with 5,070 searches on Overture alone if you were ranking well on major search engines. This would clearly provide highest return on investment for small business owner who most certainly does not have time and money available to target "web design" and who wouldn't have manpower to take advantage of rankings even if they were attained.

This is an extreme example however it clearly illustrates that sometimes phrase with highest number of searches is not necessarily best target for your business.

Phrases That Sell

Another consideration you will want to make when choosing your keyword phrases is whether or not they are "buy phrases". Phrases with a high number of searches that are not "buy phrases" will tend to bring a lot of traffic, however conversion ratio will be far lower. Should you choose to target "buy phrases" you may not get same number of visitors however your ratio of visitors to sales will be much higher.

In this example let's assume you are marketing director for a well-known accounting company. There will be many choices you can make for your targeted keyword phrase. The top searched phrases in September 2004 that were accounting-related are:

• "accounting" with 156,095 searches
• "accounting software" with 54,621 searches
• "accounting job" with 32,015 searches
• "accounting services" with 19,260 searches
• "accounting firm" with 13,089 searches

Many might go with their gut instinct and attempt to target "accounting". The problem with this phrase (other than competition for it) is that people doing that search are not necessarily even looking for an accounting firm. They may be accounting students, small business owners not interested in hiring an accountant but just looking for tax information, etc. "Accounting software" and "accounting job" are irrelevant, which leaves us with "accounting services" and "accounting firm" as two main options.

From this point an evaluation of competition should be performed and pros and cons of making each primary target should be weighed based on amount of work it will take to attain phrase vs. how many searches there are for that phrase.

Often promotions that target multiple "buy phrases" will end up far more successful that those targeting phrases based solely on number of searches due to increased conversions and generally decreased competition.