Optimizing your site for best search results

Linking and Links to Your Site

Getting links to your site is one of most important jobs you have when trying to properly optimize your site for search engine listings, regardless of which search engine you are attempting to get listed in. Having links to your site assures that it will be found by spiders of major search engines, and more links coming to your site, more pages from your site are going to be listed in any given search engine. The more popular site, more exposure you get, both from search engines and general browser. Link trading, or exchanging links to other sites on your page for links to your own on their site, is an excellent way to get started in getting some links to your site. There are thousands of sites out there with automated link exchange pages, where you simply fill out a form and place their link on a page of your site, and you get a link from theirs. You can easily get 20 to 50 links a day from such pages, although they aren't as high quality as others you can find.

Any site on internet with a "Links" or "Resources" page can be a potential link exchange partner. Simply find sites that relate to yours, even in a general sense, and send them an email requesting a link exchange. Be sure to have a link to their site on your links page and give them a link to specific page their link is on. It also helps to have your links dispersed into categories, rather than having one long page with 1,000 links on it. This will make people more eager to trade links with you due to it being much easier to find their site on your links page. Keep a list of sites you have emailed, and mark off which ones have or have not replied and have or have not placed a link to your site. If after two weeks no link is present, or owner of other site has not replied, simply delete their listing from your links directory and move on. There are enough sites out there, no matter what topic you relate to, that link exchanges are not difficult to find. These types of sites generally have a higher popularity and higher quality traffic than instant submissions, although it does take a bit longer to accumulate amount of links you need.

Another way to get links quickly would be to sign up at one of various link exchange websites like linkpartners.com. These will usually charge a small subscription fee, but you will get a large amount of links in a relatively short amount of time. Remember when dealing with these type of sites to deal with only links from your particular category, as it will help more in long run. Also, be careful who you link to within your own category. Try to stick with high-popularity websites that show up high in rankings on your favorite search engine. Having quality over quantity with links, as well as most other optimizations, is vital if you plan on being ranked highly for any period of time.

Also, try to keep your links coming in. With a massive burst in incoming links that completely dies next month, search engines grow suspicious. Either try to spread out that massive burst out over next few months, or keep incoming links at or above number you got last month. With this approach, major search engines "see" that you are not only gaining in popularity rapidly, but you are continuing to grow in popularity instead of dieing out.

Content

When you are planning your website, ask you following questions:

1. Who is your audience? Your main goal is to provide information to meet needs of your key audience, in a manner that is user-friendly. Audiences may include your clients: businessmen, professionals, etc.

2. What goals do you want to achieve with this site? What problems is your Web site trying to resolve? What are advantages to having a Web site? Think about these questions as you prioritize your goals, and use them as a guide in your decision-making.