Search engine optimization, or SEO, can be divided into two parts: on-site SEO, and link building.

On-site SEO is the process of optimizing the content of your pages for a particular keyword or keywords. The easiest way to do this is to use a free tool like WebCEO that will analyze your webpage and make suggestions on how you can better optimize it.

At it’s simplest, on-site SEO is making sure that your keywords are found (in the right numbers) in the right places. Specifically, the search engines want to see your keywords in:

- Page titles
- Page body
- Bold text
- Top of page
- Bottom of page
- Alt text
- Text links

Link building, the second half of SEO, is at least as important as on-site SEO, but is often neglected. When search engines look at your site, they also look at all of the sites that link to your site. Each site that links to your site gives your site a certain number of “votes”, based on several factors.

So, the more quality links you can get to your site, the higher you will rank in the major search engines. But before you can start gaining links to your site, you need to know what makes a quality link. There are several factors that determine a link’s quality:

1 – Anchor text
A high quality link will have your keyword(s) in the anchor text, or the clickable text part of the link.

2- Site quality
A high quality link is one from a quality, unique, content based site related to your site.

3- Anchor text variation
When building links, you’ll want to vary your anchor text. If all of your links have the same text, search engines may discount them as spam.

4- Slowly but surely
Good things come to those who wait. Building links should be done slowly and steadily. If you build a whole bunch of links at once, you risk the links being discounted as spam by the search engines.

But do we know that there are various things we need to check before agreeing to exchanging links with another web site? After all, the whole point of exchanging links with others is to benefit from the ranking of their web sites. It is therefore imperative that we investigate ahead of time as to whether exchanging links with another site is to our advantage or not.

I have thought about this whole idea of link exchange preparation and came up with a 3-step process that involves an analysis of 3 pages of the web site we want to exchange links with. The 3 pages are:

- the home page where we will need to check 7 things about that page,

- the directory page: this is the page that contains a list of categories that the site has put together in a bid to organize its link exchanges. We need to check 7 things here,

- the backlink page: this is the page that will contain our backlink. We also need to check 7 things here.

Note that in some cases, the ‘target’ web site will not have a directory page. In that case, our analysis will be a 2-step one rather than a 3-step one.

In this first article, of may be 2 or 3, we shall look at the 7 things (organized in 2 groups) we should check about the home page of the target web site.

1. We need to check what Google thinks of the site. This is done by looking at some things that Google is happy to report about a site. The idea here is to see if there are any problems with the site, from Google’s point of view, that would cause us to decide not to exchange links with them.

I suggest that we look at:

a) how many pages does the site have indexed? This can be done by using ’site:www.site.com’ in the Google search box,

b) how many backlinks does Google report for the site? This can be done by using ‘links:www.site.com’ in the Google search box,

c) is the site listed in Google’s index? This can be done by using ‘http://www.site.com’ in the Google search box,

d) what is the Page Rank of the site/home page? There are several ways of doing this. One way is to get the Google toolbar and visit the web site to see its PR. Another way is to use one of the many web sites on the Internet that enables us to find the PR of any web site. And still another way is to look for software that will tell you the PR of any web sites.

Although we will generally need to look at these 4 things together in a sort of table in order to decide whether the target site passes the first step or not, there are definite results that would cause me to decide straight away not to exchange links with a site:

- if the PR of the site is zero,

- if the site is not listed in the Google index,

- if the site does not have any pages indexed by Google.

You will note here that I am using Google as the first step in the preparation. In fact, we can use any search engine if we want to but given that Google is more fussy than others when it comes to backlinks, I would suggest using Google in the above first step.

2. I would then suggest that we look at 3 tags of the home page of the target site, in a bid to determine if the site has a theme compatible with ours:

a) its title tag,

b) its description tag,

c) its keywords tag.

There are several ways of checking the contents of a web page’s tags. If your browser, such as MSIE, allows you to view the contents of a web page, then you will need to visit the home page and click on the right menu command to view the contents of the page. Then you will need to scroll to the top of the page to view the contents of its tags. The alternative is to look for web sites on the Internet that enable you to view the contents of the tags of any web pages. There are many such web sites on the net.

The reason for this step is that Google takes into account the theme of web sites when looking at backlinks. This means that backlinks from a site that has a theme compatible with ours will be of higher value than one that comes from a site that has nothing to do with what our site is about.

As mentioned above, this preparation is on the home page of the target web site and is only the first step. There are 2 more steps: one on the directory page and one on the backlink page.

It is only when the target web site passes the 3 steps that we should feel confident about exchanging links with them in that the link exchange will be to our advantage. Needless to say that the target web site will also need to conduct a similar 3-step analysis of our site prior to wanting to exchange links with us.

Serge M Botans

Here’s the reason.

A web site isn’t an ad. No one “peruses” web sites in some “web site newspaper.” In fact, no one will go to your site unless you specifically invite them. A web site actually needs advertising.

You need to build traffic to your site.

There are a lot of great ways to do this and one terrific way is with backlinks.

What is a backlink?

A backlink is a link FROM another site TO your site.

For example, if you are a member of Coachville, and someone is looking for a coach, then it is possible that this person sees your listing in the “Find a Coach” section and clicks a link to your web site.

This is a backlink from Coachville to your site.

Backlinks are also referred to as “in-bound links” and sometimes can be called “reciprocal links.”

Many of the links that coaches have on their web site are designed to take visitors from the coach’s web site to other web sites. These are usually located in a link section or a resources section. These are also called “forward links” or “outbound links.”

The important thing to note is that a backlinks bring visitors TO your site. Once visitors come to your web site, you can turn them into clients, product sales, newsletter subscribers, commissions and more.

So why are backlinks totally awesome?

Firstly, the obvious, is direct traffic to your site. This traffic can be cashed in for clients or sales.

Secondly, when done right, “backlinking” can sky-rocket your search engine rankings and thus result in even more traffic.

How?

From the eyes of search engines, your “site’s worth” increases when the number of backlinks increases. Each backlink raises the popularity of your web site.

It’s like being the popular kid in school. The more kids who know you, the more popular you are.

What does this lead to?

When people put the phrase “life coach” into a search engine, for the most part, the sites with higher popularity will come up first.

Thirdly, backlinks can create consistent traffic.

Sending out newsletters and giving talks often bring you immediate “bursts” of traffic.
Bursts of traffic are great, but require you to make those additional efforts in order to continue to get that traffic.

Backlinking builds a steady, consistent, and predictable stream of traffic that keeps coming without additional work. You can confidently expect the same number of visitors each month.

Fourthly is the snowball-effect.

Creative backlinking strategies can create a situation where your web site is attracting backlinks without you doing any work at all. It’s like a snowball going down-hill that continues to grow.

Getting a high ranking in the search engines is considered by many to be a black art, with the search engine geeks trying to keep one step ahead of the search engine optimization gurus. With the continual changes in search engine technology it is very difficult to keep up to date with them and to keep your site optimized and ranking high.

This is why backlinks actually work out to be one of the most effective search engine optimization techniques on the market. They are cheap, quick to develop, and long lasting. They are also not likely to ever be completely penalised by the search engines. Yes, certain types of links or links to certain sites may detract from your search engine ranking, but quality backlinks will always be good for your website and your business.

A backlink is effectively a link from another site to your own. Here we are talking about one way links, i.e. they link to your site, but you do not reciprocate. This holds more value in the eyes of the search engine and benefits you much more.

There are a lot of different ways to get backlinks to your website, including:

Articles – submit articles to the article directory and the resource box will contain a link to your website – a free backlink!

Directory entries – every niche will have at least several hundred directories of sites that are relevant to that niche. Get yourself listed in all of these, and you have lots of free backlinks!

3 way link exchange – unlike traditional reciprocal link exchanges where two sites point to each other, this is a slightly more cunning way which is meant to fool the search engines. It does mean one of the link partners needs two websites though. Website A links to Website B which links to Website C. Person A owns Websites A and C and Person B owns Website B. To the search engines, these appear as one way links (at the moment! There is talk of the search engines wising up to this).

Forums – posting in forums is yet another method of getting your link seen. If you participate in the forum discussion then usually you can have a link to your site in your signature file. Remember though that you must add value and not just blatantly promote your website or post to get your signature file shown as this will result in bad will towards you and eventual blacklisting and banning

Blogs – putting comments on blogs is another way to get backlinks. However, be aware that if you are not adding value with your comment it may well be considered spam and then deleted and blacklisted. So don’t just post “great entry”, writing something that is useful and appropriate.

Backlinks are surprisingly easy for you to acquire with a little bit of work. If you don’t want to do the work yourself then you can very easily hire someone who will do it on your behalf, though make sure they will be ethical about it!

With backlinks you can boost your search engine rankings and get yourself free traffic, which means free money when they buy your product!