If you are new here, you would like to read previous posts on link building here at: Off Page Elements: Increasing your Web Visibility and Reach Part 1,Off Page Elements: Using Articles and Blogs,Off Page Elements: Link Building and Blog Comments

We have discussed several traditional methods of link building, today we will continue with some more discussion on link building and increasing link popularity.

A note about Nofollow: if you are not aware about Nofollow attribute, let us have a little outlook in the background of Nofollow. Google allows you to make any link (both internal and external) un crawlable by using a special tag rel=”Nofollow”.

This tag is used for primarily three purposes.

1. Avoid leaking of link juice to less important pages. Web pages like contact us, privacy statement, shipping and order, cancellation policy have less value in terms of SEO, so Nofollow tags can be used for these pages to avoid leaking of link juice , which in turn will help you to achieve higher page rank for main pages.

2. To stop theme ambiguity. Nofollow tags are very useful in building a theme of a website, in other words its very useful in proper SILOING( discussion in coming posts) of a website. For an example if you are building a website related to wooden furniture and want to base all your keywords on it, you may want to Nofollow all the pages related to basic knowledge of the wooden furniture and all the pages related to fiber and steel furniture.

In this way you can establish a solid theme for your website. A special point to note here is Nofollow tags are only for search engines and not for human visitors these links are still clickable and can funnel traffic.

3. While linking to websites for whom you are not sure about the correctness and authenticity of their information and authority.

What does No follow tags inform to search engines and are they counted in backlinks?

The answers is yes , the links having Nofollow attribute are still crawled by search engines and help in increasing link popularity.

The Nofollow attribute only tells the search engines that the reference, in which the link is used, is not sure. This means if any webpage is linking to another webpage with reference green bags and uses Nofollow attribute, then it marks the search engines that although I am linking this webpage about green bags but I am not sure about the content and authority of the webpage. In other it can be taken as voting a webpage whose authority is not confirmed.

So do not be over concerned about no follow tags in various web2.0 websites and forums. They might not transfer as much link juice but they will help you in increasing your web visibility which will gradually establish your authority in your area.

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This post is in continuation with my previous posts on off page search engine optimization. If you are new here you can read those posts here at: Off Page Elements: Increasing your Web Visibility and Reach Part 1, Off Page Elements: Using Articles and Blogs

Today in this post we will talk about benefits of link building, blog comments and the various ways to accomplish the task.

First we shall have a little discussion about various types of links we can have for our website and easy tips and tricks, both manual and automated to build them.

Types of Links:

Basically links are categorized on the basis how they propagate link juice to a web page in consideration. Links or backlinks are mainly of three types one way, two way or reciprocal and three way links.

One way Link:

One way link, commonly known as backlinks is a link which is pointed to web page with out the page linking back to it. For an example if there are two web pages A and B, and if A links to webpage B but it does not links back to it. These types of links are known as one way link. These links are most powerful and beneficial for boosting search engine rankings and page rank.

Two Way or Reciprocal Links:

When two web pages link each other mutually, these types of links are called two way or reciprocal backlinks and the process is known as link exchange. There are many automated ways by which this process can be done but the quality of the link they provide are of very less importance. High quality two way links can be made by finding useful websites related to your website topic and calling or emailing the webmasters for mutual link exchange.

Three way Backlinks:

Many a times when we contact any webmaster for link exchange, they give us a proposal of three way link exchange in reply. Suppose we have two websites one related to jewelry and second to mobile phones and the webmaster in consideration also has the same situation, he has one related to diamonds and other with electronic gadgets. So he links us from his diamond website to our jewelry website and we link from our mobile phones website to his electronic gadget website or vice versa, in this way making a triangular linking pattern. This way of links is known as three way linking. If the websites involved in the link exchange are hosted on different IP addresses, the links are treated as one way links in the eyes in the eyes of search engines, thus giving ranking boost in the search engine result pages.

Contacting Webmasters for Link exchanges:

The right way of doing link exchange starts with doing emails to the webmasters of relevant websites. For finding relevant websites you can use Google. Just type “your keywords” add your link, “your keywords” add your url. In this way you can find relevant web pages for doing link exchanges.

How to write emails:

Start with a right salutation and write a personalized note. While finding the contact details, try to find out the names, so that you can personalize the note to them. Explain them the reason of contacting them, many of them do not know the profit of doing link exchange, so explain them a little about the profits of doing link exchange not only regarding search engine but also in reference of the website visitors. Explain to them how their visitors will be benefited by visiting your website. In this way, you will increase your chances of positive response and successful link exchange.

Spying your competitors:

Find the backlinks your competitors have. Google does not show all the backlinks of a website. So use yahoo for this purpose.

Try to find out all the websites which are linking to your competitors and find ways to get links from same website. Just do the same they are doing but do better than them. If they are getting good rankings, it shows that they are doing the things right, so copy their strategy and you will get good return on your investment, in the form of good rankings and traffic.

Using Blog Commenting:

Blog commenting is an easy and effective way of building one way backlinks to your website. Find relevant blogs using Google either using Google blog search or doing the following query:

“your keywords” inurl:blog

Find relevant blogs and contribute valuable comments, but keep in mind DO NOT SPAM. Read the post and collect some idea to write comment, most of the people just write “great post” and similar garbage. Please do not use such things, contribute value to the post. This will not only help in adding value to the post but also increase the chances of your post to be published.

Some more posts about off page optimization in coming posts. See you soon. Until then implement the strategies taught in this blog and you will see good rankings for your keywords in the search engines.

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This blog is in continuation with the post about Off Page Optimization which can be found here: Off Page Elements: Increasing your Web Visibility and Reach

Article Submission: Article submissions are done basically for two purposes (there might be some more but I submit articles for these two) one for traffic and second one is for one way backlinks. Ideally I like to submit 10 articles for each keyword I am targeting on my website. Many article directories like ezinearticles and articlesbase allow content syndication, which allows website owners to publish content on their websites. In this way you get more backlinks to your websites. If the article is interesting and your resource box is spicy it will get good click through rate sending a lot of visitors to your website.

While submitting article keep some points in mind. Write article with around 300 to 350 words as the article with more than 350 words loose theme and users lose their interest in them. Give a little time to your author’s bio box, use specific call to action words.

For reading more about submitting articles and scaling your article submission campaigns refer to the following posts about article submission.

Maximizing Benefits of Article Submissions

Scaling Article Submission Campaigns

Blogs Posting: For the purpose of link building free blog platforms (the blogs on these website is called hosted blog) are great resource. There are millions of free blog platforms available and you can choose one or several of them. Blogger.com and wordpress.com are most commonly used blog platforms. Here is the list of most common blog websites.

Aeonity.com

Blog.com

blogates.com

blogetery.com

blogger.com

blogr.com

blogsome.com

blogster.com

bravenet.com/webtools/journal/

clearblogs.com

ehow.com

googlepages.com

hubpages.com

iseekblog.com

myspace.com

pbwiki.com

quazen.com

rticlz.com

sampa.com

squarespace.com

squidoo.com

stikipad.com

thoughts.com

tumblr.com

wikispaces.com

wordpress.com

When using free blog websites chose wisely because some hosted blog platforms, wordpress.com for an example does not like blog with commercial intent and they delete such blogs. So in your blog posting provide information to the users and do not make your blog posting as sales pitch. My strategy is to make one blog for each keywords and I post at least 5 blog post on each blog of 250 words

IP Diversity: Try to use different blog platforms. Suppose you want to target 40 keywords, target each keyword using one blog having 5, 250 words articles. Do not make more than two on one website. For an example make 2 blogs on blogger, 2 blogs on wordpress, 2 on typepad, 2 on xanga and so on. In this way you will get backlinks with diverse IPs which would be more beneficial than having links from 10 blogs on a same account from blogger.com.

During your link exchange campaigns also do not exchange more than two links from website on same C Class IP.

Using Squidoo and Hub Pages : Squidoo and Hubpages get a lot of love from Google and I have experienced that they are easily ranked. So use these two in your link and traffic building campaigns. Take two or more long tail keywords for your niche and make lenses on Squidoo and hubs on Hubpages. Use at least 600 words articles for making lenses and hubs.

For reading more about choosing long tail keywords, read my previous posts on keyword research here at :

Keyword Research: Follow the Right Path

Keyword Research: Follow the Right Path Part 2

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In some of our previous post we had discussed about several on page elements which influence the rankings of the webpage in the search engines.

If you are new here you can read the posts about on page optimization here at:  On Page SEO elements Part 1, On Page SEO elements Part 2 and On Page SEO elements Part 3.

In these posts I have pointed some very crucial points which must be taken care of for proper optimization of a webpage.

Some webmasters say that on page optimization accounts for 20% and off page 80% of overall optimization process, but in my opinion on page accounts for 60% of the overall optimization process and I am saying this from my experience. I have tested many of my websites, which ranked highly only by doing on page optimization in very competitive niches. Opinions may differ on this topic, but the heart of the matter is both factors must be taken care of and done wisely.

In coming posts we will discuss several topics related to off page optimization and traffic generation and if you follow each step there is no reason, you do not achieve higher rankings in search engines.

Achieving higher rankings takes time and work. So just follow the main points below and over time you will see good rankings of your website.

What is off page optimization?

First of all let us take a look on off page optimization. All those work done excluding website is known as off page optimization work. Commonly it is taken as link building through different sources and increasing web visibility.

Links can be made through different sources like directory submissions, articles etc. Below given some very common ways to build links for your website, use these in your off page optimization campaigns and you will get good return on your investment, in form of good rankings and traffic.

Submitting to Directories: Directory submission is one of the most common ways to build links to websites. Directories are of basically three types, free, reciprocal and paid.

Free Directories: Free directories or Free for All (FFA) directories are those which accept all kind of links and do not need any reciprocal link. You do not need to pay any fee for being accepted in it. The submission in these directories is easy and can be done in bulk, but the quality of links is of poor quality (save some exceptions). So shall we submit to these directories?, the answer is YES. Although the quality is poor but they help a lot in increasing the web visibility of your website.

There are some exceptions, like DMOZ.ORG, Dmoz is the largest open directory project on the web and the best part is, it’s free. But it is very hard to get listed in this directory. So while submitting to this directory please follow each and every instruction of submission.

Paid Directories: These directories either take one time fee for inclusion or an annual fee for being listed. The quality of the links from these directories are high. The reason behind the quality factor is the manual review of the links submitted to them. The search engines give good weightage to these links. If you have some budget you must go for these. The best of the paid directories is Yahoo Directory. Look Smart, Ezilion and Best of the Web to name a few.

Reciprocal Directories: These types of directories need reciprocal links from the websites which are submitted to them. That means you need to link back to them from your website. These links are also good in quality. But always choose good reciprocal directories to submit.

Free directories get expired as the owners do not renew their domains and hosting( because either they fail to make money from these ventures or they are too busy to maintain them) . So in the case of reciprocal links, always keep check on the links and make sure you are not linking to any expired domain.

List of Directories:

Free and Reciprocal Directories:

1. Directory Critic
2. VM Options
3. One Way Text Link
4. VileSilencer
5. Web Directories
6. Links Admin
7.Dmegs

Paid Directories:

1. Paid Directory List
2. Web Directories
3.Best Web Directories
4.Paid Directories
5. Directory Critic
6. Cheap Paid Directory List
7. Paid Directories

More posts on off page optimization coming soon

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Article marketing is a great tool for promoting products and attracting traffic to your website and every internet marketer know the importance of article marketing (commonly known as BUM marketing).

There are few points, if taken care, can maximize the benefit of article marketing.

Purpose of Article Submissions: There are mainly two purpose of article marketing, one is one way backlinks and second is traffic. If your intention is just to get some one way backlinks pointing to your website, you can write article on any keyword related to your website. But if you want backlinks and traffic both then choose your keywords wisely.

Common Mistakes: The most common mistake is writing articles without keeping in mind the goals. Newbie article marketers generally choose broad keywords for writing articles. They get backlinks but not traffic.

Choose long tail keywords for your articles, with low competition, which will rank in the search engines sending good amount of traffic to your website. For an example instead of using “Yoga Mats” use “How to choose best yoga mats” as your keyword. The broad phrase keywords have lot of searches but in turn they also have very stiff competition. So choose your keywords (long tails) wisely to scale your article marketing campaigns.

Using Ezine Articles for scaling your campaigns: Subscribe to the ezinearticles.com newsletter. It sends it on monthly basis about the performance of your articles. It also includes the keywords with which the articles were found. Use those keywords to write more articles and you can bring lot more traffic to your website simultaneously with one way backlinks.

I am a fan of ezinearticles.com because of the linking structure of the article pages. If you view an article on this article directory, just scroll down and you will see a section of related articles. Just imagine on how many pages your article link would be there, giving extra boost to your article rankings, so choose your keywords wisely while submitting to ezinearticles.

Article Directories you must include in your BUM marketing campaigns:

1. Searchwarp.com
2. Ezinearticles.com
3. Articlesbase.com
4. Goarticles.com
5. Amazines.com

For reading more about article marketing, read my previous post here at: Maximizing Benefits of Article Submissions

I hope these tips will improve your article marketing campaigns, if you need any help on this or you haven’t got any point please post in the comment section.

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