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Having incoming links to your website is the single most powerful way to gain recognition in the eyes of the search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN.  The types of links that you have pointing at your website, however, will make a large difference in the type of attention and recognition that you get from the search engines.  Things that worked a few years ago are not necessarily the things that work well now.  In order to stay on top of the search engine result pages, you need to stay on top of what the search engines require.

Several years ago, it was a fairly easy thing to get to the top of the search engine result pages, or SERPS by launching a massive reciprocal linking campaign.  You simply sent out massive amounts of e-mail to webmasters offering a link to their website in exchange for a link back to your own.  As a matter of fact, it really didn’t even matter what kind of website you were acquiring the links from, as long as the link pointed towards you.  Google was counting all of these links as being beneficial and pointing to the fact that your website was an authority on your particular subject.

Once the word was out, so to speak, some people over used this method to the point where Google eventually stopped counting reciprocal links as being all important as far as ranking your website.  As a matter of fact, too much reciprocal linking may have even been an indicator that your website was participating in something that they disagree with.  Overnight, people lost their position in the SERPS as a result of this change in the Google algorithm.  Does that mean, however, that all reciprocal linking is bad?

Reciprocal linking can still be a very important part of your search engine optimization plan.  What you don’t want to do, however, is to rely entirely on this form of linking.  Google loves links and they probably always will but you need to start developing campaigns that will result in one way links into your website from authority websites within your same niche.  Links from off-topic websites and reciprocal linking will still continue to give you some weight but the all powerful one way link is what will launch your website to the top of the results.

Even though reciprocal linking may be close to dying, it is still an easy way to gain a little bit of recognition.  There are still plenty of scripts out there which make reciprocal linking an automated process and if used properly, can make a difference in your rankings.  As of right now, Yahoo and MSN still give credit to these reciprocal links and Google still credits them to a certain extent.  Until they are totally dead, it will always be a good idea to include them in your marketing efforts as they may make the difference between you being number two on the listings or number one.

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Guido Nussbaum

Of all of the traffic that you can get your website, some of the best visitors will come as a direct result of your website being listed in the search engines.  Not only is this traffic very targeted, since they are looking for something specific, it is also free, which makes it all the more valuable.  In an effort to gain this free search engine traffic, many individuals have begun employing various search engine optimization techniques to help their websites to rank better.  These techniques come in two basic forms, on page and off page optimization.  Although on page optimization is important for you to understand, it is the off page optimization that will really propel your website to the top of the list.

Although there are many different things that you can do in order to improve your search engine rankings, the most popular and most effective is through obtaining inbound links to your website.  These links can take on a variety of different forms and they can come from a number of different areas but some of them are much more effective than others.  Let’s start at the bottom of the list of links that you can obtain and work our way up to the most effective.

Several years ago, it was very common for individuals to exchange links to their websites.  This was a process that is known as reciprocal linking and it helped many people to be able to gain SEO ground within the various search engines.  Unfortunately, this pattern of linking was also very easy to exploit and many websites overdid the process until it became almost the useless.  Today, the search engines put very little value on a reciprocal link but that doesn’t mean that it has no value whatsoever.  It should still hold a position in your SEO efforts, just make sure you don’t focus entirely on this type of link.

Another type of link is a one-way link that comes from efforts that you make to get listed on a variety of different websites.  These can include directory links, links from articles that you have written and links in forum posts that you have made.  One of the most popular of these is article marketing where you write articles on topic, post them to the various article directories around the Internet and include a link back to your website.  This can help you to gain some ground in the search engines if it is done properly and persistently.

The holy grail of links, however, is a one-way link from a well-established, on topic website.  Unfortunately, these are very difficult to obtain as many of these websites will not link out to other sites.  If you make your content compelling enough, however, you may get some natural links from these websites.  You can also offer to write original content for their website in exchange for a link.  What ever it takes to get your link on their site, it is well worth the effort as this will help to propel you to the top.

Below are some more great ressources about Off Page Search Engine Optimization.

Role of Directories in Link Building

Edu & Gov Links

On-Page and Off-Page Optimization

Top SEO Blogs by RSS Subscribers

To your success!

Guido Nussbaum