The answer of course, is no. Search engines still love websites that have tons of fresh and relevant content. It is the basis of what search engine results are all about. Copywriting fees are worth every penny when it comes to adding well written descriptions of your products and services onto your website. Professional optimization companies still flourish because of the success they bring to their clients through increased rankings and traffic. For optimum results, you need both optimization and links to succeed today.

It's not just the quantity of incoming links, but the quality and relevance of the websites from which they come, as well as what words are used within the visible text portion of the hyperlinks, i.e. "anchor text.” Reciprocated links have less value than they use to and can potentially hurt your rankings if you are exchanging with too many unrelated websites, i.e. bad neighborhoods. One-way links are the best links.

During the last few Search Engine Strategies conferences, I could not help but notice an increasing number of link-related workshops, including a class dedicated to purchasing text links. Matt Cutts, official spokesman and software engineer for Google shared how he personally believes that buying links is like a politician buying votes and that incoming links should only grow naturally. He shared that the best way to receive incoming text links was to offer something truly helpful and/or unique and interesting to the public and that this would generate free unsolicited, incoming links without even asking. He offered some extreme examples of very creative websites, which caused a national media stir. Within minutes frustrated attendees spoke up about how the search engines started this whole thing by giving too much criteria to links in the first place, and that buying links on other sites (be it through banners or text links) has been a conventional form of advertising well before Google even existed.

Some commented that if Google was considering penalization for sites that buy or sell links, they should start with Yahoo, since Yahoo earns a good portion of their income from selling paid text links (i.e. $299/year directory listings). Interesting enough, Google actually recommends on their website that you submit to directories such as Yahoo.

I am sure that a majority of website owners today would love to come up with creative ideas that would generate a ton of unsolicited media attention. The truth is that coming up with something exciting to say about reverse vacuum pumps, or single-mode fiber optic tool kits, or Batesville real estate is easier said than done. Most of the clients we work with offer clear and simple information about their products and services. Waiting around for other websites to give them free, one-way text links may very well result in additional years of continual poor search engine rankings and a lack of sales.

So how do you build back links? Below is a short list of some of the most common ways to increase your back links:

- Offer something truly helpful that may inspire others to link to you without even asking.

- Hire a website positioning firm to help you write and distribute press releases and articles to thousands of sites.

- Ask business partners, vendors, distributors, family members, golf partners, etc. to link to you.

- Ask non-profit organizations if they would post a "contributor" link to you in exchange for a small donation.

- Offer quotes and testimonials to sites you are comfortable with in exchange for a direct link to your site.

- Exchange links with websites (but stay within your industry and away from automated programs).

- Purchase text link ads (costly, typically $20/month each and up – but may be worth it for the right industry).

- Submit to quality directories whose listings are known to show up as valid back links (excellent value). Try www.300subs.com

Do you need thousands of links? Not necessarily. You may not even need hundreds. Everyday, we perform competitive back-link research and people are often shocked at how little it would take to rise above their competitors. Even if you are in a fairly competitive industry, there are often select search terms that may be far less competitive than others. This is why it is helpful to partner with an experienced search engine positioning company who can aid you in strategic decisions.

On-page content and optimization by itself is no longer enough. Unfortunately, link popularity has become a dominant factor in deciding who ranks the highest within the major search engines, especially within Google. If a competitor of yours is both optimized for the same target search terms and has a higher quantity and/or higher quality of back links, they are going to outrank you: period. Even if your website is perfectly optimized for an extremely niche search term and no other site in the world even mentions your exact phrase, you may still have trouble finding your website if you do not have at least a few back links to “validate” your website.

If it came down to a contest between on-page optimization efforts against link building efforts, links would win hands down. You may find it shocking to hear a President of an optimization firm saying such a thing, but its true. I would challenge anyone to outrank a website that has a massive number of quality back links by using on-page optimization efforts alone with zero link building efforts. Whereas, you can easily outrank a website that is extremely well optimized by focusing heavily on link building efforts. An interesting example is Apple.com. One of the most important elements of optimization is to place the target key phrase within the meta title tag. However, search for the word “computers” on Google and you will find Apple.com on the first page of results. Apple does not even mention the word computers in their meta title tag. How is this possible when there are literally millions of competing websites that are aggressively trying to show up for this term by applying various optimization efforts? The answer is that Apple.com has a superior volume of back links (over 70,000 in Google alone). And a large percentage of these links include the word computers within the anchor text (i.e. Apple Computers, Mac Computers, etc.).

Since search engines were invented, there has been a constant head to head between the search engine algorithm writers and webmasters. Every time the algorithms changed the webmasters tried to outwit them. The internet is full if conflicting SEO advice on how to achieve top rankings. This article hopes to clear up some of the confusion.

In the beginning it was sufficient to have an adequate amount of keywords on your website in order to rank highly in the search engines. This led to keyword spamming, a practice which still continues today amongst inexperienced webmasters.

Then along came Google and the goal posts shifted. Google put more emphasis on webpage linking, Their thought was simple - if one website had a link to another website, then it was as if the first website was placing a vote of confidence for the second website's content and therefore the second website must be useful and relevant to the readers of the first website. Thus the Google Page Rank was invented.

Soon the webmasters and internet marketers got to work. This saw the emergence of link forms and reciprocal linking sites. Internet marketers declared that the more links that appeared on your site, the higher it would rank in Google. Suddenly link pages from websites started to run into multiple pages as the race was on to exchange links with whoever would agree. Some sites started to have thousands of links point to their sites and began rising in the search engine rankings.

Of course the game of cat and mouse with Google continued as the search engine giant once again changed its algorithms.

It is now widely accepted that previous linking strategies are failing because of what Google now expects from links.

RELEVANCY

Google expects links on a site to be relevant to the readers of the original site.

ONE WAY LINKS

Google gives a much higher priority to one-way links without a reciprocal link in return.

ANCHOR TEXT

It is better for the anchor text (the actual text that contains the link) to be keyword relevant to the content and also to vary as numerous instances of the same anchor text without variance can be interpreted as keyword spamming.

The importance placed on the above factors has all but eliminated the effectiveness of previous linking strategies. Most links on link page directories were exchanged with any site who would reciprocate. Therefore most of these sites were not relevant to the original site.

The reciprocal linking strategy also negates the one-way linking preferred by Google. Most link directories contain the same anchor text in all links, as this anchor text was advertised on the "link to us" page.

Therefore Google now looks upon these reciprocal link directories as having little value. They do not distribute page rank and therefore do not help the ranking of your website.

Article writing is now a major weapon in search engine optimisation. From this article you will see why previous linking strategies are failing miserably. As the major search engine, Google now expects links in order to increase your site ranking to be:

1 Relevant
2 Varying Anchor Text
3 One Way Links

These rules display that more of a natural linking strategy need to be evolved.

Writing expert articles about the content of your website helps to achieve the three objectives above.

First of all, you are able to place links within the resource box of your article pointing back to your website. Some article directories even allow you to place links within the article body itself. Therefore any link text that points back to your website is highly relevant to the article content itself, and your sire.

It is possible to vary the anchor text from article to article while still keeping it keyword orientated and most importantly, relevant.

By submitting your article to article submission sites, you are not committed to place a reciprocal link back to the article site on your website. This ensures that the link to your website is one way.

By writing many quality articles, you will start to be recognised as an expert in your field.

You can see how writing articles about the subject of your website can be a master SEO tool. However, things get even better.

Ezine authors and webmasters also regularly scour these sites for fresh content for their ezines and websites. Your article is free to be distributed and republished as long as it remains intact, with the resource box and all links live.

What this means is that each article can potentially create hundreds or thousands of backlinks to your website, each of them relevant, varying in anchor text and one way. Not bad for about 30 minutes work. So the advice is simple - get writing, or if you feel unable to write your own articles, get someone to write them for you!

I was recently researching alternate methods of advertising for a client since PPC’s like Adwords and Overture are so hit and miss. And since the optimization process for the search engines can sometimes be a long one, we needed to find a quick solution to targeted traffic.

There is a myriad of programs and services out there that offer great things when it comes to this aspect of internet marketing. You all have read my rants and raves about the uselessness of these over hyped self proclaimed “guru’s” and their “amazing laser targeted” B.S. Whatever you do, do not fall into their game. It will only be a waste of your hard earned money.

One of my most favorite quotes of all time is "the only thing that works is work". My Grand Father used to tell me that to get me to cut his grass with an archaic push mower with out an engine. So the question is what to work on.

The answer is eZines. People have been building opt in subscriber lists since the dawn of the internet and many have literally thousands of subscribers. This is where the work comes in.

The task? Locate these list owners and request an advert. This can be a tough project and a risky one. Let me tell you why. Finding an eZine publisher that will have an attentive and responsive list is like finding the proverbial “needle in a haystack”. These days almost every website has a newsletter. The issue at hand is whether or not that list has been abused. If the list owner rarely publishes, over publishes, inundates their subscribers with ads, publishes junk, or any other form of eZine malnourishment, the subscriber will opt out of the list, or worst case; junk mail it. If it is junk mailed the publisher will never know that his subscriber is not receiving his mailings, thus developing a padded list.

Now that you know the dangers and pitfalls, I will give you a solution. I have four tools and a process that will help you make an educated decision when choosing an eZine publisher to place your website’s ad in.

The first is an easy way to find publishers that are willing to place ads. The best part about this tool is you will be able to find many publishers that will allow first time ads to run for free. And for you webmasters with a list already, you will have the opportunity to run “joint ventures”. These are “swapped” ads on each others’ eZines. 

The Directory of eZines is the place to locate these publishers. I added my info to this directory and within 24 hours I was receiving offers for ads and joint ventures. With the help of the Directory you will have literally thousands of list owners just waiting to send out your ad.

Just because you have an abundance of advertisers at your fingertips in the directory doesn’t mean that they are honest about their info. Some will say they have 3000 subscribers and really have 300. You have to beware of the fact that people will lie to you to make money! So to protect yourself by using the following process and tools so you can discern the liars from the true players.

First step is to locate your chosen advertiser in theDirectory of eZines. Make a note of their list size and the frequency it gets published. Look for publishers with a large list and a bi-monthly circulation.

Next follow the link in the directory to the eZine sign up page and sign up. Use a free email address from hotmail or yahoo so that the address can be dropped if the box becomes a spam target. As the weeks go on read the publications and note the date and frequency they are published.

You should also read their archives if they have them available to see what kind of content they publish and what ads they allow to be run through their eZine. If you see a prominent ad, then you know that that advertiser trusts that ezine publisher.

The next step is to evaluate the traffic of the eZine publisher’s website. You will need to figure out if the traffic justifies the claimed size of the publishers list. For example; if the list is said to be 10k subscribers but the site only gets 2k visitors a month, it is unlikely that the list can be that size. Notice I said unlikely. They may have undergone other list building methods or build subscribers from multiple websites. 

The best evaluation tools are Google Page Rank, Alexa, and Metrics Market. All these tools will give you a rank or estimated traffic hits for a website. Look for a high Page Rank and hits from Metrics Market and a low Alexa ranking. Sometime on Alexa you can see how long a website has been online, and that will give you another good indication as well.

While you are going through this process be sure to be submitting your ad to the ezines that will allow a free ad. Don’t send an ad selling your wares; instead send an ad that is giving away a freebee that will require their readers to subscribe to your list. This will increase your subscribers from theirs and in turn can make you more money that an advert for your products or services.

In closing, use your best judgment. Be sure to budget your advertising expense and from your research, pick the best eZine to advertise with. If you get a good response from that ad run another. Mix the ads up so they look fresh and new.

Feel free to contact me with any questions about this method. There is a lot to it and it can be time consuming, but it is a highly effective way to build your list and website traffic.

SEO = Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization is the process of scientifically tweaking a particular website’s pages in order to get a good rank from major search engines for a competitive keyword or group of keywords.

SEM = Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing is one effective example Internet Marketing that involves search engine optimization. This involves planning and executing right methods to target and get quality traffic to a particular website and convert this traffic into sales or signups.

SEO Specialist = Search Engine Optimization Specialist

Previously called Search Engine Optimizers (SEO) but revised to SEO Specialist to give way and prohibit confusion with search engine optimization as SEO. This term is use to describe a professional practitioner performing effective search engine optimization procedures.

SEM Specialist = Search Engine Marketing Specialist

Term used to describe a professional that analyzes a certain website and recommend a particular procedure to perform in order to get the desired traffic and sales.

White Hat Procedure

Search Engine Optimization procedure that comply with search engines rules. Also known as ethical procedure.

Black Hat Procedure

Search Engine Optimization procedure that do not comply with search engine rules. Widely used by many SEO specialist to get a good rank in a shorter period of time. Effective but very dangerous procedure that may cause a certain website to be removed from a major search engine’s database.

Web Directory

Online List of websites categorized by type, niche country and others depending to the owner. It was mainly used by search engine optimization specialist in creating inbound links to their websites. New directories are commonly accepting free submissions while others require a reciprocal link in exchange for the submission. DMOZ is one example of web directory. This is the most popular and considered as the biggest web directory of links in the internet today. It is currently composed of thousands of volunteer editors and millions of web links in its database.