The LuxMob Info Tags

You can rank number one (Or at least in the top ten) for just
about any search phrase by just buying text link ads, even if
the web site isn’t related to the search phrase in anyway, it
can still rank in the top ten of the search results. Some web
site owners see this as the only true way to the top ten. So,
should you buy your way to the top? Or should you play it safe?

Some say it’s better to be safe than sorry. While others say if
you play it safe and never make it to the top ten of the search
results, your losing anyway. So, it must be much better not to
play by the rules and get a top ten ranking and make a little
money before you get banned from the search engines. Well, it’s
not that easy and you can see the cons and pros in both ways.

First let’s look at the pros of playing it safe. The first one
is obvious and it’s that you have a lot less chance of getting
banned and much safer. At the same time you can peacefully sleep
at night without worrying whether you’ll be banned the next day
you wake up. It also allows you to save money and spend it else
where, such as PPC (Pay Per Click) search engines, banner
advertisement, mailing list and offline advertising. You can
also rank number one without buying text link ads if you provide
good content because many other webmasters will link to you just
because you have good content and it provides their users with
valuable information. You could also exchange links with other
web sites. If you correctly SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
your web site you can get a fairly good search engine ranking.

There are also several cons of playing it safe. Besides the fact
that text link ads help improve your search engine ranking, they
also bring in a good amount of traffic. In order to get a good
amount traffic from links you would need more than just a few
backlinks, but since you won’t be buying them, you will not
being getting that many web sites linking to you and most of
them are from web sites that are not popular among internet
users.

All the major search engines see backlinks from quality sites as
a vote for the web site being linked to, by playing it safe it
will take much longer to get a top ten ranking because of the
lack of backlinks. It can take years before you will rank for
any popular search term because you will only be getting links
the natural way. Without many backlinks you’ll also have a hard
time getting in the search engines.

Now the pros of buying text link ads. Buying text links ads will
help improve your search engine ranking, which can bring more
traffic than from a link from any web site because. Each link
acts as a vote your web site in the search engine’s eye, so the
more you buy, the higher you’ll rank. If you buy an enough text
link ads your web site can rank number one for just about any
search term.

Text link ads can also send a fair amount of visitors that’s
targeted. Resulting in more and new customers. Getting a link
from a web site that’s trusted and well known can help build
your web site’s brand and increase your credibility because
visitors will see the link as a recommendation to your web site.
Which will also help bring in new customers because they trust
you more than they did before.

The cons of buying text link ads make many people think twice
about buying text link ads. It will cost a lot of money to buy
text link ads. You need to pay for your link to stay on a web
site for at least two months before you will see any major boost
in your search engine ranking. You may never get your money back
because there’s so many things that can go wrong.

It can also hurt your search engine rankings if you don’t do it
correctly and safely. You should never buy a lot of text links
ads all at once, some search engines can detect this and may ban
your web site from the search results due to this. There are
other ways the search engines can find out that the links are
being sold, meaning some links on certain web sites may never
count in the search engines.

The Conclusion - Now that you have seen the pros and cons you
can decide for your self whether you should buy them or not.

If you have spent more than a few minutes studying search engine
optimization and web traffic building then you know that text
links are important — most especially one-way links from
quality sites.

So many people interested in building traffic to their sites
spend a lot of time, effort, and money building text links to
their sites. They purchase links in link directories, buy links
from brokers and site owners, and even swap links. Others try
different methods like forum posting, blog commenting, and
article writing.

But most of these people overlook one very easy and inexpensive
way to achieve one-way, often permanent, text links from quality
sites. What is this method of text linking? It is usually called
Ezine Advertising!

That’s right, just like pork is the other white meat, ezine
advertising is the other way to text link.

There are many advantages of ezine advertising when it comes to
text link building:

1. You get the added bonus of email marketing benefits

2. Text link surrounded by relevant content, your ad copy, that
you wrote specifically for that purpose

3. Limited outbound links competing with yours. Ezines only sell
a few ads per issue (many only sell one or two) so your text
link will be only one of a few.

4. When the issue is archived on the web (which is how you
achieve your permanent text link) the page is usually text-heavy
with the content that search engines love

5. The site where your permanent text link resides (the ezine
archives) is regularly updated and in turn regularly visited by
search engines

All these advantages roll into one additional bonus for you.
The text links appear to have developed organically and
naturally — not as so many traditional text links do — which
makes them even more powerful and effective in terms of traffic
building and search engine optimization.

And unlike so many text links which are purchased monthly or for
a limited time, an ezine ad is purchased for a particular issue
and will remain alive for the months or years that the issue is
archived. If you aren’t sure how long an ezine archives then
check their web site. Many ezines and newsletters archive for
years.

Article writing and distribution creates free one way incoming
links back to your web site. Link building in this manner
increases your web sites exposure, visitors and you overall
search engine rankings. By using the following techniques you
can dramatically improve your web site traffic in a very short
period of time.

1. Create Viral Content For Your Web Site - Add your own
resource box/byline to your articles and post them on your web
site. You could allow your visitors to publish the articles on
their web site if they also include your resource box and keep
your hyperlink active. This will spread your link around the
internet like a virus and increase your link popularity fast.

2. Submit your articles to free content web sites for other
webmasters to reprint for publishing. When you include your
resource box at the end of the article with your website URL you
will not only get free advertising but you will get a link back
to your site. This will increase your link popularity and cause
your site to rank higher in the search engines.

3. Combine your articles into a free e-book. You can place your
business ad and hyperlinks back to your site in the e-book.
E-book creating software is inexpensive and easy to use. By
giving your e-book away to visitors and allowing them to link to
your site to give it away to their visitors will multiply your
web site traffic, exposure and link popularity.

4. Create an article directory on your web site. People will
visit your web site to get the free information. By allowing
them to reprint your articles with the stipulation that they
keep the resource box and hyperlink active you will increase
your link popularity. Also allow your visitors to place a link
on their web site that links back to your article directory. By
providing your free “instant article directory” to their
visitors you will increase your web site’s exposure and receive
a percentage of their visitors as well.

5. Offer other web sites, that are relevant to your own, free
content articles about your area of expertise to post on their
web site. Include your link on all of your content. Your article
should be related to your web site because it will bring you
visitors that are interested in your product or service.

6. Use an article distribution service that distributes
articles to thousands of web sites, newsletters and ezines at
one time. Your article will be published on dozens of web sites
almost immediately. I used this technique with an article
distribution service called thephantomwriters.com and got
literally thousands of links from only four articles. Distribute
your articles several times and you will increase your exposure.
Change your article’s title and redistribute it several times
more to maximize your article’s potential.

As you can clearly see, writing and distributing articles can
have a profound affect on your web site’s exposure. There is
absolutely no better or faster way to increase your web site’s
exposure, link popularity and search engine rankings.

© Copyright 2005 Affordable Concrete Cutting, Inc.

I feel the most effective way to get people to link to your web
site is by offering web masters the option of giving away your
free stuff. In exchange, they link to your web site. Why would
other web masters want to do this? They may want give away a
freebie to draw traffic to their web site. They also may not
have the time, knowledge or skills to give away certain types of
electronic freebies from their web site.

Your links will just keep multiplying. When a web master offers
your freebie to his or her visitors. Those visitors may decide
to also give away your freebie. And so on and so on… The more
people that link to your web site the more traffic you’ll get.
Below are four of the most popular types of freebies given away
on the internet to increase traffic.

Free Software

Offer free software from your web site. The software could be
freeware, shareware or demos.

Free Online Services

Offer a free online service from your web site. The online
service could be an e-mail account, search engine submission or
e-mail consulting, etc.

Free Information

Offer valuable free information from your web site. The
information could be a report, article, e-book, online audio
recording or e-mail course, etc.

Free Affiliate Program

Offer a free affiliate program from your web site. The affiliate
program could be pay per sale, click through, two tiered, etc.

Now, I know, there are many other ways to get links like
trading or exchanging links with other web sites or joining a
banner exchange. You can also do joint ventures or cross
promoting. I feel these are not as effective as multiplying your
links. I hope this article can help you increase traffic to your
web site.

Article distribution is currently booming on the internet.
Authors do it for a number of reasons.

- It is a good way to be picked up by the search engines.

- The backlinks from your resource box can help your search
engine position.

- You have the possibility of secondary traffic if your article
is picked up by a popular website or ezine.

Various products and services have become available that help
you distribute your articles to the 100s of article directories
and mailing lists.

a) Software that speeds up maunal submission, or can in some
cases do this automatically.

b) Services that distribute articles in your name

c) Services that distribute articles on your behalf, but in
their own name.

The Double Edged Sword

Many people pay a premium rate for article distribution on their
behalf, without the worry of having to join various article
directory sites as a member, giving their own email address, and
receiving lots of emails from various Yahoo groups.

Unfortunately what they don’t realise is that often this
devalues their work.

1) In the author section on many sites, the name of the
distribution service will be shown, not that of the original
author.

2) Author sections of many article directories are a unique
marketing venue. Many visitors will visit the author profile
before reading an article all the way to the bottom. Most
profiles could have one or more websites listed.

3) Within RSS feeds from the article directories, the
distribution service might be shown in the byline, not the
original author.

4) Many article directories allow an author to change or modify
their resource box. If an article was submitted using an account
owned by a 3rd party distribution service, that avenue will be
closed.

Complete Control

For authors who want complete control of their branding, either
submit manually, or use article submission software. You will
receive more emails, but can always have a special email address
for this purpose. Googles Gmail service I find is an excellent
choice. Article Announcer and Article Submitter Pro are two
examples of such software.

Limited Control

Use an automated submission service that ensures you are the
author. There are services that signup for members to
directories on your behalf, using a username and password of
your choice. One such service is Article Marketer.

The Inconvenience

You will have to confirm your membership to many distribution
points, and some will continue to send emails containing
articles from other people. Yahoo groups normally allow you to
select a digest mode, or to not receive emailed articles at all.

Most of this is a one time effort, although you will have
to be on the lookout for important messages on the email account
you use.

The Massive Gain

They are your articles, and you should gain maximum benefit from
them.

Using article distribution is much like a varient of Pareto’s
80/20 rule. You potentially gain 80% effective results compared
to manual distribution, for 20% of the work.

However if your method of article distribution doesn’t give you
all the possible credit for your articles, rather than 80%
effectiveness, you might only be getting 60% or less.

Managing your own article distribution with tools such as
Article Announcer or Article Submitter Pro gives you complete
control to achieve your 80/20 goals.

A service such as Article Marketer which gives you full credit,
and reasonable control, might be 70% effective, for 10% of the
work.

Refining your processes, and only using the most effective
method where it benefits you the most, you can maximise your
return for the work invested.

I use a combination of service and software for my own
distribution.

Banner networking is merely an exchange of links on
participating sites. You post a banner on your site whilst
others post yours on theirs. The agency will provide you with a
banner ad together with the accompanying html for display on
your site in exchange for reciprocal treatment or commission.

Banner networking is of interest to websites, especially in
their website promotion efforts as it helps to expose their
products and services to a varied audience with minimal effort.

As a website there are two ways to get involved in a banner
network - by exchanging with other partners or by submitting
your banners to a network by display by affiliates on their
sites.

You can join a banner network with great ease. You only have to
go to network and then apply to be a member. You supply the
banners and then the accompanying text together with a fee and
then you are through. From this point, affiliates who have
subscription to that program will go for your banners and then
display them on their sites where visitors will click on them to
reach your site.

Banner exchanges worth looking into include:

123Banners - http://www.123banners.com 1800Banners -
http://www.1800banners.com BannerSwap.com -
http://www.bannerswap.com Bpath - http://www.bpath.com
Click4Click - http://www.click4click.com Free-Banners.com -
http://www.free-banners.com/ Link Buddies -
http://www.linkbuddies.com NEObanners -
http://www.neobanners.com/ Relmax Flash Banner Exchange -
http://www.rfbe.com/ That’sMySite.com -
http://www.thatsmysite.com/ etc.

The biggest advantage of this kind of network is the high
exposure your site gains. Since most of these affiliates are
small websites without heavy budgets in search engine placement,
they tend to invest their promotion in other non traditional
ways that big websites don’t. As such you are able to reach
areas where you would not normally go as a big site with
considerable budget.

There is however a down side. You lose control over who should
place your banner and where it will de displayed. If your banner
is placed at objectionable sites with bad content, your website
reputation suffers and thus, you can lose credibility. This
situation can come about if either the exchange programs places
the banner arbitrarily on the members sites or the members
themselves chose where to place them.

Another disadvantage is the annoyance that can result from the
display of your banner. If the website displaying your ad is not
complementing your website theme, then the banner will not be
wanted on the page and thus pose some nuisance which can affect
the popularity of your site.

For the above reasons, it is a good thing to carefully assess a
network before you join. You can look for one that allows you to
approve your network partners manually so that you can be able
to asses the quality and relevance of their websites before you
allow them to place your banners on their websites.

Banner networking boosts traffic by exposing your site to a wide
range of website’s audience. It must however be tackled with
great care so that your banner does not end up at a site with a
bad reputation.

Good luck with your website, Reginald

Linking strategies play a major role in a website’s link
popularity. And linking alone carries a heavy load for a
webmaster’s work. However, funny as it may seem, linking
strategies are a way to please the search engine gods!

For quite a time, many webmasters do reciprocal link exchanges.
By exchanging links, webmasters think that the search engines
would count the resulting incoming links as a popularity vote.

But because the search engines never divulge any information
about how they count a website’s link popularity, webmasters are
simply trying to figure out what the search engines want and
consider in their algorhythms.

With that in mind, you might think that the webmasters are
simply doing a lot of guess work! But mind you, many webmasters
are doing analytical strategies to decipher the hidden codes of
the search engines. Unfortunately, the search engines also keep
changing their algorhythms, thereby, making the webmasters
continually chase the unknowns - keeping the chase alive.

It is now speculated that probably reciprocal links are dead.
That probably search engines simply consider one-way incoming
links only. In effect, some webmasters are also trying to device
another strategy called triangular links. They claim that with
triangular links, the search engines would consider the link as
more natural than a reciprocal link.

Although there may be some wisdom in the concept of triangular
links, there are also more chances that some webmasters can
cheat other webmasters too. As always, while we are still in
this world, evil can still be around the corner.

Whether webmasters are making considerations between reciprocal
links or one-way links, it should be noted that it is a lot
better to have some incoming links than nothing at all. And by
having that, everything can still boil down to the original
content of a site - thereby validating the claims of other
webmasters that “Content is King!”

————————————

Internet
marketing strategy consultations is also available at
http://www.internetmarketingconsultant.biz