Exchange links

Comparison with Other Linking Methods

Reciprocal Linking: The big advantage of content distribution over swapping links is that the links built are one-way, and therefore presumably more valuable. Of course, reciprocal links still have value, but relying primarily on them might hamper your SEO efforts.

Indirect Reciprocal Links: I link my site A to your site, so you link your site to my site B. The problems are that this can be a lot of work, and also, Google can detect indirect links if you do it more than once with the same group of sites, which might make your linking arrangements look like a link farm.
Paid Links: The problem with paid links is 1) the costs add up; 2) search engines are getting better and better at discounting paid links. According to Matt Cutts’ blog, “I wouldn’t be surprised if search engines begin to take stronger action against link buying in the near future…link-selling sites can lose their ability to give reputation (e.g. PageRank and anchortext).”

Kinds of Content to Distribute

Articles. This is the essential kind of content distribution, to the point that many people consider content distribution simple as “article marketing.” However, you’re missing out on a few other sources of links if you only do articles.
News blurbs. A lot of news-style sites will only reprint pieces of a couple of paragraphs. The good news is that often enough the whole point of these news blurbs is to include links to other sites, in a sort of “look what we’ve found” kind of way, a la Slashdot.org
Press Releases. There are some sites that aggressively reprint press releases. A press release is like an article, only in a very specific press release format, and frankly that’s not that enjoyable to read. I don’t know why some sites are so head-over-heels over press releases, but, hey, that’s their business. The good news is that even if you can’t write and don’t want to hire a writer, press releases (at least basic ones) are pretty easy to do.
Tools, games and other webware. Sites with popular tools, software, Flash games and other webware often let other sites use it in exchange for a link. The big potential downside is technical support.
Images. Images, especially charts and photographs, are important forms of content on the web. If you have great images on your site and people ask you to use them on their sites, require a backlink in exchange. The problem with images is that they are so easily stolen. Stolen words can be uncovered with a web search. You could try to watermark images with a copyright symbol, URL, and the link requirement. But in the process you’d make the image much less desirable.
Web design templates. These have been freely distributed for a long time. Yet they are even more easily stolen than images. Also, if you embed a link in the footer of a web template, what you’ll get back are sitewide links, which are often thought to be filtered out in search engines.

Maximizing Content Distribution Links’ Effectiveness: Anchor Text

Anchor text. You need optimized anchor text to rank high for any competitive keyword. That means you need your target keyword in the anchor text, and very importantly, variants of the target keyword (too many links with the exact same anchor text may be filtered). The problem is that some sites by default don’t let you choose the anchor text of the link to your site. So you need to: 1) look for sites that do reprint content with optimized anchor text; 2) specifically ask for your target anchor text to be used. Also, do keep in mind that a true natural linking structure will require you to have a number of links that are not anchor-text-optimized, typically with the URL as the anchor text.

How to Find Sites

Finding sites to submit content is the biggest challenge. You can start by asking around to any other webmasters you already have a relationship with. Next, web-search. The classic method is “submit article” + [keyword]. Most of the sites you find this way won’t be good candidates, which is why this can be a bit labor-intensive. I use offshore labor for this step, as well as a program that will sort and store all the search results into a spreadsheet; otherwise it might not be worth it. Then again, the same would be true for finding reciprocal linking partners.

Ethical Issues & Best Practices

Golden rule: remember that there’s a human being who has to approve your article for submission.

Read and adhere to all submission guidelines.
Avoid automation. There’s almost always some detail of submission that requires a human eye: a multitude of html formatting requirements, changing site themes, etc.
Don’t submit by email unless specifically instructed. Using a contact form prevents possible sp@m accusations.
Only approach websites that request content submissions.
Don’t misrepresent reprint content as original.
Don’t submit the same content too often. After about two hundred reprints, a lot of people will be seeing the same thing over and over again and possibly complaining.

In short, as SEO gets more competitive, having more and more linking methods at your disposal gets more and more important. Don’t overlook this important tool.

On-Page Optimization. On-Page optimization enables each of your web pages to make the most out of the mojo that they have — but you need inbound links to create that mojo in the first place.

I use the term “mojo” as a generic descriptor for the importance given to a web page or a web site based upon inbound links. Similar terms include page rank, site rank, trust rank, and authority. Those terms tend to carry too much linguistic baggage, so I use the term “mojo” for simplicity unless another term is specifically required.

Mojo is created by getting inbound links to your web site and to your web pages.

Getting inbound links is one of the most important, and time consuming, tasks involved in SEO.

Here are a few tips to generate inbound links. Each of these tips are appropriate for some web sites, but none are appropriate for all web sites. Select the link building strategies which are most appropriate for your specific web site.

Submit to Web Directories

Start with big slow directories like the Yahoo Directory and the DMOZ Open Directory Project, but don’t stop there.

Search out the small directories which are dedicated to topics relevant to your web site.

For more suggestions on finding directories to submit to, read How can I find web directories?

Reciprocal Linking

Write individual e-mails to specific webmasters whose web pages compliment your own and tell them that you would like to trade links with them.

Make sure to personalize each e-mail, or your e-mails will be quickly deleted as spam.

To achieve the best results from your e-mail, include the following in your initial e-mail:

* Mention two positive items about their web site, so that they know that your e-mail is not a generic spam.
* Include directions to the specific web page where you have added the link to their web site.
* Mention the Page Rank of the page where you have added a link to their web site.

These web sites exist to help you search for reciprocal link partners in the same market niche’ as your web site:

* Find Link Partners
* Link Partner Finder
* Themes Reciprocal Link Finder

Write Articles for Other Web Sites

One method for getting inbound links is to write quality articles and submit them to other web sites for publication.

Each article should include a link back to your web site.

These links are better than links from link pages, because there tend to be very few outbound links on the article page.

Write a brief article on some topic related to the topic of your web site. Do not write an article about your web site, but write an article that would be interesting to people who would also be interested in your web site.

Send this article to webmasters who maintain web sites on topics similar to the topic of your article. Explain to them that they can post your article for free on their web sites, in return for a link to your web site.

To find web sites to submit articles for publication, visit Where can I submit an article for publication?

Create and Submit Press Releases

Write press releases about your web site and submit them to press release distribution services.

To find places to submit press releases for publication, visit Where can I submit my press release?

Join a Reciprocal Link Program

Reciprocal linking programs exist to help webmasters share links with similar web sites.

Some of the reciprocal link programs are:

* Link Market
* Info Wizards
* LinkExchanged
* Link Partners
* Links-Pal
* Linkateer
* Webmaster Link Exchange
* GoTop Link Exchange ($19.95 fee to join)
* LinkLeads
* Link Traders
* LinkExchangeIt
* SiteSell
* 123ExchangeLinks
* Ads4Links
* Spocka
* Links For You

If you have a blog, try blogLinker, the automatic link swapper for blogs.

These link networks can generate a lot of e-mail. You will probably want to create a new e-mail account just for these networks.

Join the DigitalPoint Ad Network

The DigitalPoint Coop Advertising Network enables you to automatically trade links with thousands of web sites across the Internet.

Join a Reciprocal Linking Forum

Several web forums exist for the purpose of sharing and trading reciprocal links. These linking forums include:

LinkRequests
Link Trade Forum

Start a Reciprocal Linking Program on Your Web Site

You can also setup a reciprocal linking program on your own web site.

For more information on setting up a reciprocal linking program on your site, read How can I add a reciprocal link manager to my web site?

Start or Join a Web Ring

You can use an existing web ring service such as WebRing, or you can create your own web ring using the PHP-Ring webring script.

Join or Create a Top Site List

Search for top site lists which are relevant to your web site.

Add yourself to the existing lists. If no relevant top site lists exist, create one.

Provide a Useful Service

Create dynamic content on your web site which other web masters can include on their web sites by linking to it.

Every webmaster who uses your content automatically adds a link to your site.

Firearm News is an excellent example of this. If you add a small bit of JavaScript to your web page, your users will receive up-to-date news on firearms.

Of course, you will also have to contact other webmasters to let them know about your service — perhaps even with a press release.

Buy Links

If all else fails, you can always buy links to your web site.

On-page optimization, however, is something you can do quickly to give yourself an extra boost in the SERPS.

These tips will help you to optimize your web pages to make the most out of your inbound links.

One Page - One Target

Each page should be optimized for only one search term. If you are targeting two search terms, make pages for each term.

If your search term has a synonym, make separate pages for each synonym. For example, if you are targeting “drywall” and “sheetrock”, make separate pages to target each term.

One Target - Two Pages

The preceding tip only tells half of the story. You don’t actually want to be #1 in the SERPS for each of your search terms — you want to be #1 and #2.

Google and some other search engines will display two listings from a web site together if both are relevant to the users search. Therefore, for each of your important keywords, you want to build two web pages which are both optimized for that search.

The URL

Search engines tend to rank pages well when the URL contains the search term.

If your page is about drywall, call your page drywall.html, not page-1.html.

If your content management system (CMS) uses autogenerated URL’s, use 301 Redirects to turn those URL’s into highly optimized URL’s.

Use Hyphens, not Underscores

Google and most other search engines treat hyphens as spaces, but do not treat underscores as spaces.

If your URL is clint-eastwood.html, your page will rank well if someone searches for “clint eastwood”.

If your URL is clint_eastwood.html, your page will rank well if someone searches for “clint_eastwood”.

Which do you think is searched for more often, “clint eastwood” or “clint_eastwood”?

Optimize the Page Title

The page title should contain the keywords for which you are optimizing, and little or nothing else.

Many sites prepend the site name to every page title, like this:

<title>Smith Drywall — Sheetrock Delivery</title>

A more optimized title would simply look like this:

<title>Sheetrock Delivery</title>

Leave the company name for the title of the main page of your web site.

Optimize the Description Tag

Not many search engines utilize the description tag anymore, but it’s best to set it properly just in case.

<meta name=”description” content=”Drywall Delivery”>

Optimize the Keywords Tag

Even fewer search engines utilize the keywords tag, but it’s best to set it properly just in case.

<meta name=”keywords” content=”Drywall Delivery”>

Use Headings

Use the <h1>, <h2>, and <h3> heading tags to define your important content sections, and put your keywords at least once in each heading style.

Use CSS to set the fonts and sizes of the h-tags to something pleasing to your visitors.

Add a Linked Image with ALT Text

Use an image of your page with a filename which contains your chosen keywords, such as drywall-delivery.jpg.

The ALT text for this image should include the keywords for which you are optimizing.

Google is sneaky, in that it only counts the ALT text on linked images. We’re sneakier, so we link the image to the page upon which it is displayed.

<a href=”drywall-delivery.html”><img src=”drywall-delivery.jpg” width=75 height=90 alt=”Drywall Delivery”></a>

Validate the HTML

Use the W3C HTML validator to validate the HTML of your page.

Very few HTML errors will cause a web page not to rank well in the SERPS, but you don’t want your page to be that page.

In addition, validating the HTML will help to ensure that your page will look reasonably well in the wide variety of web browsers used on the Internet.

Keep Your Body Text Readable

Use your keywords in the body text, but keep your body text readable.

Don’t drywall stuff drywall your drywall keywords drywall into your drywall text until it is unreadable by humans.

Make Reasonably Sized Pages

The search engines seem to prefer pages which have at least 500 words of text. Give your visitors something to read!

Summary

If you follow these simple tips, you will get better SERPS with fewer inbound links.

On-page search engine optimization is the first step towards achieving good search engine rankings.

PHP can run on both Unix and Windows servers, which makes it more accessible than its Windows counterpart, Active Server Pages (ASP). Most full-service web design firms will have at least one PHP guru.
PHP uses are widespread, and can include any kind of server functionality that takes user’s input and displays or manipulates the input. Some pertinent examples of such work are message boards, auction sites, shopping carts, and more. There are numerous free (open-source) scripts out there for PHP newbies to use. This synopsis is meant to serve only as a gateway to other works; although the main goal is to give a reader enough information so they can make educated decisions about what their web developer should do. For those looking to get into PHP, there are many free tutorials and primers out there: http://www.4webhelp.net/tutorials/php/basics.html is a pertinent example.
PHP generally uses the mySQL database system. MySQL is a server-side system that is included on many Unix, and some Windows servers.

On the other hand, Active Server Pages runs - for the most part - solely on Windows servers. This can cause some problems. Windows hosting or private servers generally cost more than Unix servers, making it less accessible than PHP. Like PHP, ASP can do just about anything. There are considerably fewer open-source scripts written in ASP, another testament to its inaccessibility.
For those interested in ASP, here’s a great free tutorial: http://www.w3schools.com/asp/default.asp.

ASP can use many different database systems. Many users prefer Microsoft Access. Access, unlike MySQL, offers a what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor as part of Microsoft’s Office suite. In fact, you may already have a copy of Microsoft Access on your computer and not even know it. Its uses aren’t limited to databasing, it’s also used as a basic spreadsheet application for those who need a more programmer-friendly environment than Excel. ASP can also work well with MSSQL or MySQL.

A third programming language with burgeoning popularity is Asynchronous Javascript and XML. AJAX, as it’s commonly referred to, creates interactive web programs just like its cousins ASP and PHP. AJAX uses XHTML and CSS, along with the Javascript Document-Object Model to create interactive pages designed for speed and overall usability. Although AJAX hasn’t gained the acclaim of PHP and ASP, its future is certainly bright.
AJAX Basics - http://dhtmlnirvana.com/ajax/ajax_tutorial/

It’s difficult to say which of the three programming languages, or the numerous others for that matter, is the best. There will always be disputes, and no standard is set. With the varying interpretations of what a programming language should be, predilections to PHP or ASP arise. PHP is certainly more widely used, but isn’t necessarily the best. When a site is being created to be interactive, a professional can give an educated opinion on which technology should be used.

Let me tell you, getting a click now and then is not enough. This is because, Google pays you only when you reach $100 and that is a lot of money if you consider the amount you get paid for one click. So, webmasters who have Adsense ads on their site just because everyone else does it are really doing a favor to Google by providing them space to advertise for FREE!

So, if you are a kind of webmaster or a blogger who wants to make real money from Adsense, what is it that you need to look at? Two things in fact. First your Adsense target and the Second, deadline date by which you want to get that money. Because, this two can set you to plan the traffic numbers and the kind of traffic that you need to have.

Let me take a hypothetical case. Suppose you plan to reach the minimum payout exactly in time for the first payout date from now, then your target is $100 in one month. Quite an ambitious task, I tell you for a beginner, but certainly not a utopian task.

Google forbids webmasters from disclosing the money they make. So, here I choose a hypothetical value of 25 cents per click. Trust me, Google most often pays you better than this. But I choose to show you the hard road.I will perform some simple mathematics now.

Target in mind : $100 per month = $3.33 per day = 333 cents per day.
Amount per click : $0.25
Hence, clicks per day : 333/25 = 14 clicks(approximately)

So, you require 14 clicks per day to get you to the target. Sounds easy or tough? What does it take you to get to those click numbers. The Click Through Rate has been on an average found to be 1 in every 100. With that kind of a ratio, you would need 1400 impressions per day to reach per day.

That, I know looks daunting. But there are certain things to remember. For example, your Click Through Rate might also go upto something like 5% or the amount you earn per click might also be in dollars. All that depends on the kind of ads served on your site, which in turn depends on your site content.

So,as of now, making the above calculation is important. This will help you set yourself a benchmark on a daily basis by which you can compare your daily performance. However, do not change strategies on a daily basis as well. Your revenues tend to fluctuate a lot,and your strategies should always follow the longterm pattern.

The way it can help you as a business owner is that it saves you time by simply posting answers to questions on the forum so all users can read the information and you don’t have to worry about answering the same question hundreds of times or more. Also, the forum provides new users with a significant amount of information in a short period of time, therefore providing an overview of your products, services or whatever is being discussed in the forum.

Also, forums provide a meeting place for forum users and offers kinship because the forum is focused on a particular topic. This makes users feel comfortable communicating with others and often times create a form of friendship and exchange of ideas that keeps users coming back time and again. The bonus for your business is that if you have a free forum and people continuously return, it will increase the percentage that individuals will buy a service or product from you.

Another important aspect of the forum, for users and yourself, is that when a large group of people are communicating new ideas are presented daily and old ideas are improved upon. Everyone gains from new and improved ideas, techniques and methods, and this source of information alone could dramatically improve your business flow.

If you provide a forum that is monitored and has relevant information, subscribers and users will continuously return because the forum is a place to give and receive information. This is very important for the individuals using your forum as well as for your business. Basically, while you are providing a free service to users they are providing you with traffic to your web page and most likely increased sales and new ideas.

This is an incredibly useful tool and should be utilized by business owners interested in reaching more individuals by creating a club like atmosphere in the forum with the exchanging of ideas, as well as increasing your own business. Setting up a forum will help you bring the same users back to your web page time and time again, which is important because it has been proven that over 70% of sales are made after the third, fourth or fifth customer contact.

Also, continuously updating your web site and providing a relevant forum will help your web page be returned in free search engine results. As a result, the forum not only keeps users continuously coming back, but it helps get your web page noticed by potential users and subscribers, thus increasing your traffic even more.

There is no reason for you not to start a relevant forum on your web page today and see the results of increased traffic and higher sales.

Unless you provide only one product or service the chances are you will want to rank for many key phrases. One way to help achieve this objective is to change the link text you want all new sites to use periodically. Vary the anchor text slightly each time and by doing so you can cover more of your targeted key phrases. This approach can help your site rank for many keywords rather than just one or two.

If you do only provide one product or service on your web site it is still important to vary anchor text. If you sell ‘blue widgets’ then you could also use link text like ‘cheap blue widgets’ or ‘blue widget store’. This means your links take on a more natural feel and are much less likely to be penalised or filtered out by search engines for being ‘fake links’.

2. Set up your link information differently - create a link in context

Typically people set up their link information in a very similar way, however you could offer your link information with the hyperlink inside the description instead of at the beginning.

Imagine this is a description about your web site on a partner’s link page. Instead of a typical hyperlink followed by a description you could write a sentence describing your web site and then place “your descriptive hyperlink” inside it.

One reason for doing this is that it reads more naturally and search engines may value the link higher as it reads more like a narrative. Many webmasters will be happy to accept this style even if some do not. To cover yourself offer the link in context as a second option along with your regular link information, that way if some sites can’t support the layout you still get your link.

3. Vary where your links point

Try to vary where link partners point to on your site. It’s fine to have the majority of links pointing into your home page, however it can be beneficial to have some links pointing to other key pages on your web site as well. Taking this approach balances out your linking and can help raise the profile of more pages on your web site.

4. How to find potential link partners from your competitors

If a web site links to your competitors it may also link to yours, and in order to find these potential link partners you can use search engines. Not so long ago Google was useful for getting a lot of back link information about a site. Recently Google’s back link data is a lot less forthcoming and it now tends to show only a tiny percentage of the sites that are linking combined with a lot of internal link data. Whether the few web sites Google shows us are the ones it finds important or whether they are in fact red herrings we cannot say for certain. I would assume the latter.

Currently Yahoo is a better portal to check for backlinks. To generate a list of linking web sites on Yahoo simply go to http://www.yahoo.com and type the following into the Yahoo search bar.

linkdomain:www.mycompetitorwebsite.com

This will deliver up to date link information as read by Yahoo. The only downside with the information is that one site may appear many times if it is giving multiple links.

5. Alternate your description text

This is often overlooked, but there is no real advantage to be had if the description text supporting your inbound links is always identical. To avoid the possibility of a description ever being seen as ‘duplicate content’ alternate it when you can. If you combine it with varied anchor text [as in tip 1] you’re heading in the right direction.

6. Link to good related content from your web site

It seems like an obvious thing to say, but with so many people caught up in link exchanging you sometimes wonder if we’re losing site of the basics. If you have something useful to say on your site and can back it up with a useful link to another web site then do so. Not every link has to be reciprocated. This resourceful linking will allow your visitors to read around the subject. Linking to informative related content is useful for visitors and search engines quite like it too.

7. Seek out directory links

Links from good web directories can be some of the best links you can get for your web site. Aaron Wall has a ‘directory of directories’ at http://www.directoryarchives.com where you will find a great selection of search engine friendly directories. Some of the directories are free to get listed in whilst others may charge a fee.

It’s embarrassing, time consuming and not to mention costly if you are missing out on sales.

On the other side of the scale, it can be very costly to be on a larger web hosting plan or dedicated server and hardly even use the services it offers.

Good quality web hosting is not cheap, but you need to balance your business needs with what you can really afford to pay.

So what web hosting service should you be using? Good question!

In this article I’m going to be talking about the pro’s and con’s of both shared web hosting and dedicated web hosting packages. By the end of the article you should have some idea what your online business needs now and what it will need when it expands.

Shared Hosting

Shared hosting is what most small online businesses use. Shared hosting means that your site is on one server that also holds other peoples websites as well. Your website will not be the only one on that server. Very few small online businesses need the power of a dedicated server.

Most companies offer a few different types of shared web hosting services. The only difference usually being how much disk space you want or how much transfer allowance you need.

The best way to show you what the difference is between shared hosting services is to show you an example.

Go to http://www.marblehost.com/hosting-plans.html

This is an example web hosting companies shared hosting services. As you can see they offer two different types of shared hosting services. Basically they offer a small and large service.

The major differences between each package really is how many domain names you can host, how much transfer (how many megabytes that are downloading from your website) you can have and how much disk space (how many files you can store) you need.

If you’re just starting out online and haven’t got a website up yet and not sure what you are doing exactly, start off with the small plan. That’s more then enough for a small site or blog for that matter.

Now if you run a larger website and you offer a lot of downloads, say for example you’re selling a rather large ebook, you might need the large service. Let’s say you have a 10mb ebook for sale, the large service this company offers would allow you to have roughly 2024 downloads of that package before you ran out of bandwidth (transfer).

Dedicated Hosting

Dedicated hosting is for the big boys. It’s for medium to big business looking to do a lot of work online. A dedicated server is just that, you’re own server. You get your own server just for your website which is unlike shared hosting as you have to share a server.

There are many different packages available with dedicated hosting depending on how much you want to spend. The more resources a server has, IE, RAM, Hard drive space, processor speed, the more it will cost.

You can see that a dedicated server allows you a lot more disk space and transfer allowance. It also allows you unlimited domain names. Dedicated servers are also known to be a lot more stable and allow you more control over your website and are perfect for a professional image.

There are two types of dedicated servers….

Managed hosting

Managed hosting offers you the support of a technical team looking after your server. They do all the updates and technical side of things for you. They will perform routine maintenance without you even asking. Managed hosting how ever does cost quite a lot more then un-managed usually.

Un-managed hosting

Un-managed hosting isn’t as support less as it sounds. Most dedicated servers do come with technical assistance and routine maintenance, but any support questions will more then likely cost you extra. If you need something added to your server, it will cost you a in maintenance fee’s. Rebooting your server should also come free with un-managed dedicated hosting.

Multiple Domain Name Hosting

Another thing you should look at is whether or not you want to host multiple domain names with your one hosting package. Both shared hosting and dedicated hosting can allow you to do this. A lot of share hosting services now allow this.

I recommend always using a web host that allows you to have multiple domain names with your one account. It really does solve the problem of having multiple hosting accounts for different domain names.

Other Things To Look For

Other things to think about when searching for a web hosting company is what you intend to do with your website.

Do you need a lot of technical assistance? If so, look for a hosting company with live 24/7 support. Do you want to create a blog, or lot’s of blogs? Then you will need to see if your web hosting company allows you to setup multiple MYSQL databases.

According to Jupiter Research, about 2 percent of the online community has created a blog. That works out to millions and millions of blogs, and in turn, millions and millions of snobs who publish them. That’s an awful lot of Snob-Bloggers!

You see, in order to care enough to publish a blog, you really need to be somewhat of a snob. Before we get into the reasons why, let’s look at the definition of snob.

Snob – 1. One who tends to patronize, rebuff, or ignore people regarded as social inferiors and imitate, admire, or seek association with people regarded as social superiors. 2. One who affects an offensive air of self-satisfied superiority in matters of taste or intellect. (As defined on Dictionary.com)Combine that definition with the definition of a blogger, and you get a Snob-Blogger, defined as ‘anyone who blogs, period’. Yes that’s right, bloggers by nature are snobs.

Not me you say! Yes, you too! ALL bloggers are Snob-Bloggers! Do you publish a blog? Don’t believe it? Take this handy dandy quiz to see if you fit the mold.

1. Have you ever commented about someone or something in a negative or superior manner on your blog? If so, you just might be a Snob-Blogger.

2. Do you and your blog readers commiserate about topics together on your blog comment system? If true, it’s possible you might be a Snob-Blogger.

3. Does your blog link to all of your other blog friends who link back to you? On that occasion, you are most likely a Snob-Blogger.

4. If you have ever ranted about something that is only interesting to you and your blogger friends, you, I’m afraid are a Snob-Blogger.

5. If you know what RSS means, I’m guessing you are a Snob-Blogger.

6. If you would stop publishing your blog because you knew nobody was reading it, you my friend are most likely a Snob-Blogger.

7. Do you recognize Wil Wheaton as someone other than the geeky kid from Star Trek: The Next Generation? If so, you are certainly a Snob-Blogger.

Other Snob-Blogger characteristics include:
• Writing rants and opinions about things you never bothered to learn about first
• Thinking that your blog is just as, or more powerful than the mass mainstream media

There are two main solutions for this goal:
- Finding links on our own, not spending money.
- Buying text links (backlinks).

1. Finding links on our own, not spending money

*Methods in this solution include:
- Find relevant, quality websites and request for link exchanges.
- Submit to quality directories.
- Submit testimonials on websites where you have purchased any services or products.
- Write articles or posts to submit to other websites, blogs, press and forums.

*Pros in this solution:
- No money.
- Robust, stationary links.
- Accepted by search engines.

*Cons in this solution:
- More time and efforts.
- Two-way links (reciprocal links).
- Difficult to determine the time to achieve goal.

*References for this solution:
- Link Exchange programs: linkalizer.com, linkmarket.net, freelinkcentral.com
- Automatic link exchange programs: belinked.info, onewaytextlinks.com, build-reciprocal-links.com, linkdash.com
- Quality Directories: businesspages.org, a2z-free.com, alphabiz.org
- Article Directories: goarticles.com, articlealley.com, article99.com, ezinearticles.com

*Tips:
- You can find more sites for link exchange from studying your competitors’ link popularity. Use search engines to perform this check, the keyword in many cases is: link:your_competitor_url.
- When visiting some directories, pay attention to Directory category. You may find the others directories there. For example, in Directory category of businesspages.org, you can find some other good Australian directories.

*Estimated time: 2 months

2. Buying text links

*Methods in this solution include:
- Buy text links (backlinks) directly from sites (in case they don’t accept link exchanges)
- Buy text links from text link brokers.
- Buy text links from link auction sites.
- Pay fee to be included in big, quality directories (Yahoo, Overture, LookSmart…)

*Pros in this solution:
- Less time and efforts to get links.
- One-way links (better than reciprocal links)

*Cons in this solution
- Money. We must pay fee every month (or year) for some links.
- Buying text links (many in the same time) from text link brokers isn’t encouraged by search engines. They can penalize us.
- Some links are volatile (not permanent).

*References for this solution:
- Advertising on sites: iwebtool.com/pagerank_checker (PR5 - $10.00 per month)
- Text link brokers: textlinkbrokers.com (5 Permanent Links PR0 – PR4: $175 /month), textlinkpopularity.com (10 Links from PR 3 Pages: $150 - Pay only once for permanent links - no recurring charges)
- Link auction sites: linkadage.com
- Big, quality directories: Yahoo! Directory (1 link - $299/year - your site will be reviewed first)

*Tips:
- When buying links from brokers, be sure that you can preview the pages in which your link will be included. Besides the PageRank, there are other factors to take into consideration such as: relevant links in this page, how many links in that page, whether your link is static, …

*Estimated time: 1 week (some directories need more time to review our request)

3. Conclusion:
It seems that the goal of 50 backlinks with PageRank greater than 2 for new websites is not an easy one. Improving link popularity is a long, patient but obligatory process. It’s up to you to decide which solution is better or the combination of these two ones.