Increase Traffic By Having Back Links

What is link building? Link building is the process of getting other web sites and web pages to link to your web site. These links will not only drive direct targeted traffic to your pages; but will also increase your overall search engine visibility and rankings. However the process of building incoming links to your site can be a tiresome task when getting started. The purpose of this article is to outline the importance of building a strong linking profile for your site as well as to make a few suggestions of key strategies that any webmaster regardless of marketing budget can employ to climb to the top of the search engine ladder.

1) Purchasing Links & Sponsored Reviews

Paying other webmasters to place a link on their site back to yours is probably the easiest and most straight forward way to generate links to your site. However, it can become a very expensive venture, not to mention you need to pick and choose your potential candidates very carefully since a so clled bad neighborhood (website) can affect your page rank. Thus,you should look to the following before buying links:

1. The number of incoming links the candidate site itself has

2. The candidate site's overall page rank

3. The age of the site

4. The search engine saturation (number of pages indexed in the major search engines) of the site.

2) Comment and Post on Related Blogs & Message Boards

I strongly encourage you to register on message boards related to your topic or subject and include links within the signature of your posts and messages. The same goes for blogs and commenting. And please make sure that you re offering valid comments ad NOT just spamming, such as posting obvious spam posts such as "Cool site, check my site out at ..." will likely get your IP address banned from the web site or network, and can negatively impact the reputation of your brand or web site.

3) Write User Testimonials & Product Reviews

Writing user reviews or testimonials can create a lots of back links to your site. Most often when you write a review for a product or service you've had success with, the webmaster will include a link back to your site in the signature of the review. In addition, the webmaster of the site you have written the testimonial for will be more than happy to include and activate the link when they post the review onto their website. Of course, it shoud be a positive review!

4) Join a Few Manual Traffic Exchanges

You want your web site seen and clicked on by real visitors who are interested in what you have to offer. However, this can be time consumming. Thus, I recommend joining 4 or 5 exchanges that are free and if you are getting business from them, then upgrade.

5.) Write Articles and Distribute Them Online

Writing articles and submitting your articles to the popular article directories is a great way to generate many back links to your web site. You just need to write a few articles geared toward your topic and subject matter and distribute them to the many article directories on the Internet. The articles should be between 300 and 600 words. Within the authors bio area or resource box you want to include a little information about you and as well as a link back to your site. Whenever your article is picked up by other webmasters or syndicated across other popular web sites you will receive a free one way link back to your site. The down side is that this technique does requirea little investment of time in write and submitting an article.

6) Submit Your Site to Directories

There are a handful of well trusted and high quality directories that you should consider submitting your site to. You need not waste your time in submitting to hundreds or even thousands of directories. Some of the most notable directories to submit your web site to in no particular order are DMOZ, The Yahoo! Business Directory, and Google. Though most of the directories l've mentioned here are not free to submit to, the cost of submission is well worth the price as the links you'll receive from this investment are quality one-way links that carry a good amount of page trust and rank.

7) Exchange Links and Build Partnerships

Many webmasters dedicate a page on their site titled references or resources and use this page to link out to other web pages that have agreed to link back to their site. However, remember to pick and choose web sites that are well trusted and ranked by the search engines and that are related to the topic and subject matter of your own site.

8) Purchase Targeted Traffic

Remember, traffic equals sales. The more targeted your site visitor is, the more likely that a sale will result from them viewing the site.

In this article I have discussed 8 of the most effective, and commonly used methods to generate a massive amount of incoming links to your web site. Building links to your web site is not a 'set-it and forget-it' facet of web marketing and requires time, dedication and ongoing analysis. You can never have too many quality incoming links to your site.

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Richard's articles can be found on http://www.HitAlert.com