Points To Remember

The List Of Don'ts

Don't exchange links with sites that you would not want your visitors to see. This type of link can make your site look indiscriminate while defeating the entire purpose of link popularity. Also, do not ever exchange links with sites that contain nothing but a huge collection of links (AKA "link farms"). Search engines have been known to aggressively penalize sites that trade links with such sites. In addition, do not harass people who do not answer your emails. Remember that you are contacting someone, out of the blue, who probably has too much to do already.

If they haven't responded within a month of your second email, don't expect a reply (or a link). Finally, do not expect overnight results. Link building takes a great deal of time and labor, and there is no real shortcut- a primary reason why search engines place importance on it. If your site is terrible, you aren't going to convince many others to link to you, no matter how sweetly you ask.

What mistakes should I avoid with text links?

When you are dealing with text links, you should avoid some common mistakes. There are so many webmasters that they are showing like their PR is very good and requesting to you to put their link to your website.

Beware of “Fake Rank” - Watch out for “fake rank.” Fake rank is a way some web sites cheat to boost their Google PageRank numbers so they can sell you overpriced text links. This technique involves using a “301 redirect” of their web site Yahoo, which gives them a short-lived Google PageRank score of PR 9. It a PR 9 web site looks “too good to be true,” it probably is. Check their backlinks to see if it’s a legitimate PR score. If they only have a few backlinks, spend your money your money elsewhere.

Avoid “Bad Neighborhoods” - And be really careful who you link to, and DO NOT submit your web site to “Free For All” Link Pages or “Link Farms.” This will hurt your search engine rankings in the long run.

About Link Weight

An established site that has already obtained a fair amount of link popularity is generally a more valuable location to park your link. The Google Page Rank is a general assessment of the link popularity of any given page. If a page has PR5 it is considered to have above average link popularity. For each 1 point increase in PR the link popularity is increased by about 7-10 times. So a PR6 link should theoretically be as valuable as 7-10 PR5 links but there is more to the story.

The weight of a page is distributed evenly to each link within the page. Lets say we have two PR5 pages. One page has a total of 10 links, the other has only one link. In this case it is about 10 times as valuable ,weight wise, to park your link on the page with only 1 link. It should also be noted that a PR6 page with 10 links is roughly equal to a PR5 page with only 1 link.

Many webmasters only take into account the link weight when purchasing a text link. Link weight in itself is not worth much. Link weight when combined with link relevance is another story entirely.

You should keep more patience.

Link building is a waiting game. It takes time for the search engine robots to find those new links and index the pages they are linked to.

The Process of Indexing Links

Links are what make the World Wide Web go round. Links are how we travel through the web pages of the World Wide Web. The indexing, or spidering, of links on a web page is like the indexing of pages that you submit directly to the search engines. In order for your link to provide link popularity back to your website, the page the link is on must appear in the search engine databases. The search engine robots must index the web page to be included into the search engine databases. If the web page is already in the search engine database, it is a matter of indexing the updated information on the web page and having that link show as a backlink in the search engine results.