Everybody wants to draw visitors to their website. Many incoming links means many incoming paths for
visitors; it may also boost your search engine ranking. But how do you get there?A classic way of getting seen and noticed on
web is to make sure your site is linked to as many other sites as possible. The strategy of link-exchange has been so overused and abused that search engines are now wary of it and may penalize sites that are linking to "link farms", or to any other sites with non-relevant content.
This is
way it should be. We all want our web browsing experience to be smooth and pleasant. We don't want to get frustrated by stumbling over irrelevant content while following links between sites. On
other hand, webmasters all want more traffic to their sites, and get frustrated when they don't get it. There are two types of benefits from having many links to your website:
- Get improved ranking by
search engines - if you are popular, you are probably worth a visit
- People (not just search bots) actually follow
links and find your site!
If done properly, link popularity improvement is an extremely important strategy to make your website successful. Broadly speaking, you can achieve this in a number of ways:
1. The classic link exchange (link swap) method; two webmasters agree to swap links
2. You pay to get incoming links from high-ranking websites
3. By writing articles and getting them posted on other websites; including a link to your own site
4. By getting your articles published in E-zines, with links back to your site
5. You participate in online forums, where a link to your site may be included with each post
6. You start a blog/RSS feed, and get it spread to many subscribers!
All these methods involve work, in varying amounts. Method #2. costs you money,
rest may be essentially no-cost. Method #4. will probably not contribute to search engine ranking, but may give you droves of targeted visitors.
The problem with method #1. is that it's tedious. But you can get software that may automate it by helping you find link partners and manage your link collection. I am aware of these software tools: