How To Find Link Exchange Partner Sites To Improve
Last Update: Tuesday, January 04, 2005.
In this article I show you how to find link exchange partners to improve your link popularity rating, which in turn will improve your search engine rankings.
Search engine optimization experts agree that link popularity is now considered by most search engines to be one of, if not, the most important factors that determines a site's ranking in the search engines.
If you're not sure what your site's link popularity rating is, then use this link popularity check tool to check your link popularity rating in the top search engines.
Let's say we have two identical sites. One has thousands of targeted sites linking to it. The other only has a few incoming links. It's virtually guaranteed that the site with thousands of incoming links will rank higher than the other site.
So how do you find reciprocal link partners?
First, you need to work out what type of web sites would link to your site. Here are some examples of sites and the types of sites that would link to them.
Your Site: Links From:
Pet store Pet lovers' sites
Site design service Webmaster sites
Travel site Local guides
PC store Software/hardware review sites
Music store Music fan sites
As you can see, you're looking for sites that are on the same subject matter, but not necessarily similar.
So now you know what sites to look for, how do you find these sites?
There are basically two methods:
In the following examples, we'll use "pet lovers'" sites as the type of sites we're looking for.
1. Find targeted sites in the web directories, such as Yahoo!, LookSmart, or the Open Directory Project.
Go to a directory's home page and search with the keywords, "pet lover." Then click on the category the top listings belong to. The sites listed in these and related categories are the types of sites you need to contact.
If the category has a resources or directories sub-category, then try the sites in those categories first. Resources typically offer links to sites on the same subject.
2. Use the search engines to find sites that link to your competitors' web sites.
Using the search engines is probably a more efficient method of find reciprocal link partners, than searching the directories.
Go to your favorite search engine, such as Google, and search for any of the following keyword phrases:
"pet directory" - Searches for pet directories.
"pet search engine" - Searches for pet search engines.
"pet lover" links.html - Searches for link pages in pet lover's web sites.
"pet lover" resources.html - Searches for the resource page in a pet lover's Web site.
Don't forget to include the quotation marks to narrow your search.
Also try replacing the ".html" with other file extensions, such as ".htm," ".shtm," ".shtml," ".cfm," and ".php."
Now make a list of the sites. Then create a links or resources page and add links to the sites on that page.
After you've done that, link to that page from your home page. If you have hundreds of links, split the pages into different sub-categories. When you're done, upload the pages to your server.
Now contact each site by informing them that you have linked to their site and request a link in return. Don't forget to be polite and inform them of the benefits of exchanging links.
Some sites, such as web directories, will not require a reciprocal link. So simply submit your link.
The most important tip I can give you with regards to reciprocal linking is to only exchange links with targeted sites. I highly recommend that you don't exchange links with sites that bear no relation with your site. If you link to poor-quality or spam sites, it could affect your search engine rankings.
WARNING
Under no circumstances should you link to, or add links from, link farms. Link farms are considered as spam sites in the eyes of the search engines.
If you want to save time and effort, you could use a reciprocal link management tool, such as Arelis. It will help you find and contact link exchange partners.
Good luck with improving your link popularity!
How To Find Out What Keywords Your Customers Are S
Last Update: Tuesday, January 04, 2005.
In this article I show you how to capture your most targeted visitors with the search engines by discovering what keywords they search with.
To get high search engine rankings, you must include the keywords that your potential customers are search with, in your web pages.
To find out what your most targeted keywords are, you need a keyword analysis service, such as Wordtracker.
Wordtracker will help you find all keyword combinations that bear any relation to your business or service. It does this by providing analysis of actual searches conducted in metacrawler search engines.
You may wonder why it's important that you need to know what keywords your potential customers are searching with. Let me show you why with some examples.
Here are the most popular searches for the different variations of the search term, "keywords," according to Wordtracker:
Search Term Searches
keywords 273
Keywords 103
key words 68
Notice the different variations? The second keyword is capitalized. The third keyword is split into two words.
Here are the most popular searches for the different variations of the search term, "marketing strategies," according to Wordtracker:
Search Term Searches
marketing strategies 319
marketing strategy 280
Marketing Strategy 172
Marketing Strategies 22
Why Is It Important?
Well, if you wanted to target search engine users, you would want to include all the different variations of the keyword you want to target. This will help to persuade the search engines that your web page is relevant for the different keyword searches.
Another reason is that some search engines, such as Inktomi, still take case sensitivity into consideration when ranking web pages.
Here's a table of Inktomi powered search sites that provide case-sensitive search results.
Search Case-Sensitivity
ICQ Full
LookSmart Partial
MSN Partial
Overture Full
Knowing exactly what your customers are searching for is very powerful.
I have used this strategy over the years to help me obtain thousands of top 30 rankings for my web sites, and those of my clients.
If you need to improve your search engine rankings, I highly recommend that you reconsider your keyword targeting strategies.
Read my review of Wordtracker to find out just exactly how it can help you growth your search engine traffic
How To Justify A Search Engine Optimization Budget
Last Update: Tuesday, January 04, 2005.
In this article I show you how to justify a search engine optimization budget to your VP of Marketing, CFO, President, or CEO.
If you're a marketing manager, I'm sure you use all the weapons at your disposal to achieve your sales and profit targets.
Every banner advertising, direct email advertising, lead generation, magazine advertising campaign requires a proposal to justify the investment.
But what about search engine optimization? How do you justify the investment to your VP of Marketing, CFO, President, or CEO. And how do you quantify the value of search engine traffic?
Well, first take a look at these statistics.
Jul 05 2000: Forrester Research reported that over 80 percent of Internet users reach sites through search engines.
This means if your Web site doesn't attract 80 percent of your visitors from search engines, you're losing out on a lot of search engine traffic.
Feb 14 2001: A study from NPD Group found that search listings are more effective than standard banner or button advertisements when it comes to brand recall, favorable opinion rating and inspiring purchases.
In unaided recall, search listings outperformed banners and buttons by three to one, and more than twice as many people gave a more favorable opinion of companies in the top three search positions than those featured in ads.
The study also found that 55 percent of online purchases were made on sites found through search listings, while a mere 9 percent were on sites found through banner ads.
Again, if your sales from search engine traffic accounts for less than 55 percent of your total sales, you are missing out on a lot of potential customers.
So how do you justify the investment of either outsourcing your search engine optimization campaigns or employing a search engine optimization specialist to do it in-house?
Well, let me speak from my own experience.
I managed the search engine optimization for my old company's Web site, www.iBoost.com. I spent a month optimizing over a thousand web pages.
The result was that in total I obtained over 2,000 top 30 rankings in the major search engines and web directories.
This helped grow the site traffic by 33%, which translated to an extra 400,000 visitors and 8 million page views a month.
Based on those figures, one top 30 position generated on average 200 visitors a month, or 2,400 visitors over the course of a year.
The initial optimization campaign was actually carried out back in October of 2000. But the web pages still command somewhere in the region of 1,800 to 2,000 top 30 positions.
So your rankings never really disappear from the index, once you have established your positions. They may move up or down the index, but they don't usually drop off the top rankings completely, for no apparent reason.
Before the online ad market softened, my old company could command up to $25 per thousand banner impressions. So, the extra 8 million monthly page views could have generated as much as $200,000 in revenue, per month.
Since my company didn't sell any products or services on the web site, I can only imagine how much revenue could have be generated by the extra 400,000 monthly visitors.
How To Calculate What Your Visitors Are Worth
Some search engine optimization firms charge on a pay-for-performance basis. For example, one search engine optimization company used to charge $85 for a top 10 ranking. You may have come across this company.
A top 10 ranking would almost definitely produce more click throughs than a top 30 ranking. If we use the figure of 200 monthly visitors for a top 10 ranking at a cost of $85, the cost of each visitor would be 42 cents.
Not bad. But don't forget that once you achieve a top position, little effort is required to maintain that position. So, in reality, it could generate as many as 2,400 visitors in a year. At $85 for a top ranking, this equates to just 3.5 cents for each visitor coming from a top 10 listing.
Analyze your log files. How many visitors do your top 30 search engine positions bring in each month? Now multiply the average of number of monthly visitors these search terms bring in by 12. This is your average return-on-investment of each top position for a whole year.
So for example, let's say you get 20 top 30 positions, and they bring in an average of 200 visitors a month.
Top 30 Positions 20
X
Visitors 200
X
Months 12
---
Total Visitors 48,000
Now if you set a budget to acquire 20 extra top 30 positions, you would increase your search engine traffic by 48,000 visitors.
If we take the rate of $85 for each top 10 position that Coastal Site charges, 20 top positions would set you back $1,700.
$1,700 / 48,000 visitors = 3.5 cents per visitor
How much does it cost you to acquire a visitor at present? Probably somewhere in the 25-50 cent range.
Top positions in pay-per-click search engines, such as Overture, cost as much as $5 to $6 a visitor. According to Overture, the average price its advertisers paid for a visitor was 30 cents, during the second quarter of 2002.
Based on our calculations above, the cost of acquiring a search engine visitor is as low as 12% of what it costs to acquire a visitor at Overture.
As you can see, search engine optimization clearly produces an excellent return-on-investment.
Don't forget that search engine positioning is effective, because the traffic is very targeted. Prospects who find your site through search engines are actively looking for information on products and services just like yours.
Search Engine Optimization Is A Science
Just like other forms of marketing and advertising, search engine optimization requires persistence and a lot of testing.
The optimization process is complex and time-consuming. You're trying to align your Web pages with the ranking algorithms of the search engines, while at the same time trying to out-smart your competitor's optimizers.
But the fact remains, search engine optimization is cost effective, and should not be ignored.
Now go convince your VP of Marketing, CFO, President, and CEO of this fact! ;o)
