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Linking Scams, Mistakes and Facts That you MUST know

As a webmaster who is looking to increase traffic to your site and get a better ranking in the search engines, you need to know this information or you will be taken advantage of. Believe me – you will be abused by certain webmasters out there and your site will suffer for it.  It doesn’t matter if you are in services, sell items on e-bay, have a cell phone shop or an answering service or call center. What matters is knowing what is out there and to not make the same mistakes that everyone new to pagerank and link exchanges make.

Mistake #1 – Not getting people to link to your site and being afraid of reciprocal links.

Having a link that points to your site is considered a ‘vote’ by google and most major search engines. That means that the more votes that you have, the better your rankings will be.  Not having a directory or link exchange will leave your site on page 25 in the rankings, which means you’ll get 2 people visiting in a week. Not good if you want visitors to your site.  You MUST exchange links and preferably have more links in your website’s field than others.  Links from like-kind sites are deemed more important for in the world of linkdom, a vote from an answering service site to your call center site is worth far far more than a car site linking to your telecom site.

Don’t be afraid of linking to others as long as they link to you, it will not hurt you. What can hurt you is if you link to banned sites so try to stick to quality sites that don’t look like they are only there for links.  There is no such thing as a bad link – it is a myth that there are except for banned sites.
 

Mistake #2 – Using the ‘Get Rich Quick Scam’ of Linking

Once you set up a system to control your links (such as linksmanager) you need to then start your campaign.  DO NOT Join anything or any site where they give you 1500 links immediately for 9.99 a month. You can almost hear them saying…”but wait.. there’s more” Doesn’t that remind you of something? You see it in all of those infomercials with shoddy products. But wait…there’s more… and Google and the other search engines are on to it. You don’t want to get banned by the search engines and this increases the chance of doing so by 1000%.

Mistake #3 – Once a link is exchanged, that doesn’t mean they keep your link up.

Using a program that keeps track of your links is indispensable.  Without it I guarantee you that within 6 months you will have dozens if not hundreds of links on your site pointing to sites that either never linked to you or that took your link down. Programs such as linksmanager or DMXReady’s Links Manager can help you avoid that problem as it tells you who has an active link on their sites and makes contacting them very easy.

Mistake #4 – Not Knowing what Tools are out there to help

If you have no clue as to where to start looking for links that are appropriate for your site, just go to google or Yahoo or MSN and type in a keyword that is important to you. The sites that pop up are prime candidates for a link swap with you. You can also go to MarketLeap.com (a site that you must visit if you’re serious about linking strategies.) and use their free link popularity check. With this one tool you can see your site (or any sites) links. You can see how many links Yahoo or Google recognize for another site that is higher up in the rankings for your search terms. Then just visit those sites and submit a link exchange. It’s that easy.

Mistake # 5 – Linking with multiple website-webmaster pigs.

There are probably 50,000 plus people out there who buy or put up websites with the only intention of enhancing their linking strategies. Be very wary of that e-mail that you receive from that webmaster that you just exchanged links with. The one that says that he has 25 other sites that you might be interested in.  A common ploy is to swap with you –and you being new to link exchanges you salivate at the thought of getting 20 or 30 or whatever links all at once with one e-mail. Here’s what happens very often if you don’t use some kind of link management software. They will link to you and after you check to see if your link is there, one week later  - down comes 24 links, leaving just one. You are never aware of it at all. This helps the webmaster pig but hurts you.

Mistake # 6 – Disorganized Link Directory

Unscrupulous webmasters themselves salivate when they see a disorganized link page. They instinctively know that you are a newbie and will use and abuse you. There are many programs on the market. Just go to a search engine and type in link management software for some options. This is a must!

SOLUTIONS

• Make your site the very best there is. Spend time on it, develop it. People naturally link to you if they like what they see.  Content is still KING.
• You Absolutely must get some sort of link management software. Without it you will spend many hours wasting your time verifying links, coordinating, taking them down and putting them up on your website.  I guarantee you that you will be taken advantage of. The internet is just like society at large. Most people are decent and cool, but if you are unaware of the scams out there, the scam masters will find you.
• Read, learn and grow! Never stop reading up on the latest in Linkdom. A very good start would be search engine watch. Just type that in at any search engine and on the left you will be able to learn more about linking without someone trying to sell you something, than if you spent 20 hours starting from scratch.

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