So you want your website or blog to be indexed in Google a bit higher and a bit faster? The best thing you can do regarding this is giving your web presence a boost by adding effective back links from other websites.

Here are 10 useful common tips that can help you get positive back links:

• Look out for a back linking tool: In order to build back links for your blog or site you will need a tool that can help you with it. The best tool could be the back link agent where you simply type in a few keywords and it comes up with related sites that can be used for building back links to yours!

• Linking with relevant and related websites: It is very important that you build links with only relevant websites. Let’s say your site is all about underwater sports and you are back linking with sites that are about health and family, visitors will simply not click on your link as they will find it simply irrelevant and un -entertaining!

• Eminent and well known websites: It is important to back link with sites that people are well aware of. It doesn’t matter how good you are some times. Is the website you are linking with good enough? Does it attract quality customers and what do people normally think of the site. Are they willing so spend their time and money on it? If the answer is yes, then more than likely these customers will be attracted to the links on the site and might just simply click on them to visit yours!

• Article Directories: One other way to effective back linking is by submitting it to an article directory. Most directories specify the categories and sub categories in which you want your site to be listed.

• Add/submit URLs: Look out for related sites that accept URL submissions and links. It might just be the right way to building useful back links.

• Correlated Forums: Adding your signature to your posts in forums might just work out for you. Simply post related topics in the forums you visit often. A fine post might be worth a 1000 visitors every week or even every single day!

• Your competitor sites: check out your competitor sites…to which sites are they linking or being linked from? Try and get a back link from the site your competitor has got one! This could be an easy and effective method of getting visitors!

• Back link your blog: Try back linking your blog to your new article. That way you could get a higher ranking in search engines.

• Alexa and Google Rankings: Always try and check the Alexa and Google ranking on a site you want to get back links from. The higher the ranking, the better your chances of getting back links faster.

• ‘Ping’ing back links: After you have tried out and finalized on the sites you want to back link with be sure to ‘ping’ your articles or blog posts for faster results.

Following all these tricks will enable you to get good and useful back inks for your website or blog. Just give them a try and go for one by one!

To Follow or Not To Follow? That is the question. Today we did some research on the nofollow meta tag around this question: “Will an external link to a trusted source look unnatural if I place a nofollow tag on the link?” I have some thoughts on this and have broken them up into two different areas: why you would link to a site without a nofollow tag, and why you would link to a site with the nofollow tag implemented.

1.) Why To Link Without A Nofollow:

When you want to pass link juice/power to a trusted domain. The reason you may want to do this is if the site you are linking to is going to link back to you (yes, some reciprocal links are good). This is very natural in the eyes of the search engines. It is when this process is done in extreme that the search engines have a problem with it. You (as the site owner) need to make sure you are comfortable with/trust the site you are linking too and you are making the conscious decision to pass them this trust from your site. If this is the case, that you do trust the site, I would recommend getting a link back from them to your site into the sections/category of your site you are trying to promote.

2.) Why To Link With A Nofollow:

Now, here are a couple of reasons to why you would want to add the tag on link from your site. One, you do not want to pass link power to a website for the reason that you do not want to promote that website. They maybe a competitor or you may not want the search engines to “associate” your website with theirs. Another reason could be that a site is so big that it will not benefit from your site linking to it and you would rather pass that link power to another site. This goes for your own internal site. You will want to add the nofollow tag to page of less importance (ie..contact forms, privacy policies, sitemap, etc.)

Concentrating your link power to a few trusted sources who will benefit from the extra links is a crucial part of SEO strategy and helps benefit your own site and other sites you link to.

I Think the Questions to Ask Yourself Are:

• Do I trust this site?
• Are they going to link back to me (or to another property of mine)?
• Do I want to be associated with this site in the eyes of the search engines?
• Do I want to help promote this site?
• Is this a very important page to my site (Internal)?

If you answered “yes” to any of these questions then you do not want to place the nofollow tag onto the site. If you answered “no” to any of these questions you may want to think about adding it.

Getting your website listed in web directories is an important part of SEO (Search Engine Optimization). Here are the top ten directories your site should be placed in to gain SEO benefits, in no particular order.:

1.) VLIB.org: The WWW Virtual Library was one of the first websites established in the early ’90s. The process of submitting a site is somewhat complex, but getting sites placed there is quite valuable.

2.) WebWorldIndex.com: A well-established SEO friendly directory with an impressive Alexa.com rank of 32,723. The “Submit Free” link is located near the bottom of each category page.

3.) DMEGS.com: Another one of the top directories, DMEGS.com requires a reciprocal link (or payment) to be listed. It also has a search engine with screenshots next to each listing.

4.) AplusDirectory.net: A+ Web Directory has a Google PageRank of five and allows free site submissions, with or without a reciprocal link. Unlike some directories, it has a fast, uncluttered design.

5.) TheFreeWebsiteDirectory.co.uk: This popular directory offers Featured, Express, and Free listings. The submission form is relatively short and there are a wide variety of categories available.

6.) DirectoryWorld.net: A fast, well-designed directory, DirectoryWorld requires reciprocal links from webmasters who request free listings. It only accepts English-language sites.

7.) AllTheWebsites.org: One of many directories with a Google PageRank of three, AllTheWebsites.org requires registration before users can submit a website to be placed in their index.

8.) NewWebDirectory.com: To submit a link to NewWebDirectory, find the appropriate category and click on “Add Basic Listing” at the top (unless you want to purchase a paid listing).

9.) Internet-Web-Directory.com: Being placed in this top directory is very good for SEO because it has a PageRank of five and it appears in the first page of Google results for Internet Directories.

10.) DMOZ.org: Although it can take a very long time for new listings to gain acceptance, getting placed in this directory is important for SEO; it also ensures placement in the Google Directory and Search.com results.

Each of these top directories has a Google PageRank (PR) of at least three and uses direct HTML links, making them useful for SEO purposes. They don’t require payment from sites placed in their indexes.

Link building is a crucial part of creating traffic for websites, new and old. It not only generates hits when people click on the links, but improves search result positioning as well. Here are some tips on link building for new websites:

I.) A common mistake is to start trying to acquire links on just any website. Link building is much more effective when linking occurs between two websites about the same (or similar) topics. For example: one of the greatest ways to increase Page Rank is by getting one-way links as opposed to reciprocal links. One of the best places to get these are through directories, but it is best to find relevant directories.

II.) Consider distributing a press release on the new site, especially if there is something newsworthy about it. Include a link at the end of the release and post it on press release distribution websites.

III.) Don’t submit new websites to directories until they are fully functional and ready to use. For interactive sites like forums or classifieds, wait until there is some user activity before doing this.

IV.) If you have the money, consider paying for inclusion in major directories like Yahoo! Directory. Gaining quality links of this type is especially valuable in boosting search engine rankings.

V.) Don’t make new links with spaced characters (like “N e w s”) or letters made up of characters (”\/\/”); search engines won’t interpret these words properly and the benefit to rankings will not be as great.

VI.) The most valuable links are on pages with a high Google PageRank (PR) or a lot of traffic. Use CheckPR.org to determine a site’s PR, and Quantcast.com for an approximate indication of its popularity.

VII.) While your site is new, concentrate on building links to the home page. Link the home page to other important pages and they will indirectly receive some of the benefits (search rankings, direct traffic).

VIII.) Finally, such websites can also accomplish link building by looking for relevant sites that have lists of related links. If the site’s webmaster offers an e-mail address to send link suggestions to, give it a try.

The Nofollow HTML linking tag is used to prevent search engines from “following” a specific link to another web page or site. As a result, they don’t “crawl” the linked page or raise its position in search listings – both of which typically occur when the Nofollow tag is not applied. Inbound links are a major factor used in determining a site’s position in search results.

So why should you use the Nofollow tag on your site? Here are several potential reasons:

I.) Used when linking to an opponent or competitor’s web site, this tag prevents them from gaining a better ranking.

II.) Google’s guidelines call for using this tag with any link that has been exchanged or paid for.

III.) It may be used to control how search linking benefits (like PageRank) “flow” from one internal page to another.

Using the tag isn’t very difficult. The text rel=”nofollow” is added to the standard HTML linking code, between the URL and the link text. Here are several examples:

Privacy Policy

Yahoo! News

Info.com

According to getelastic.com, it is also beneficial for search engine optimization to use nofollow links for internal pages that don’t need to have good search rankings, like the Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and Contact Us pages. This particularly applies if these areas don’t have links to other pages of the site in them.

Webmasters may also use the Nofollow tag to discourage “spam” comments on articles and blog entries. In theory, people won’t post comments with spam links if they aren’t going to receive any PageRank benefit from the links. However, not all “spammers” understand this tag’s effect, and some might post links only to gain immediate click traffic.

Nofollow can also be specified as part of the Robots META tag, if all links on the page shouldn’t be followed. Syntax is much the same as the similar “noindex” command. This technique should be used sparingly. Here is the HTML code for it:

Search engines (particularly Google) basically want non-Nofollow linking to only include voluntary links which were not directly created by the web site owner (unless internal). Some exceptions exist, like the Yahoo! Directory. Links are more likely to be perceived as involuntary if they link unrelated sites or have words like “sponsor” above them.

Generally, links with the Nofollow tag (attribute) will neither help nor hurt a web site’s position in search results. The same goes for the sites they are linked to. People who visit a web site won’t notice any difference when clicking links with or without this tag in their code.

Many webmasters are familiar with the idea that inbound links to web sites benefit their position in search results. The linking benefits passing from one site to another are often referred to as Link Juice or PageRank.

A less commonly understood concept is the flow of “link juice” from one internal web page to another. The internal linking structure of a web site determines where link juice goes internally, ultimately affecting which areas gain higher rankings in search results. The more links there are to a page, the more link juice it is capable of passing around internally.

Each of the internal webpages linked from a particular page are assigned some of its link juice by search engines. The homepage often has the highest Google PageRank (PR) level within a site. PageRanks range from zero to ten (PR0-PR10), largely based upon the quantity of links to a site from relevant pages. PR plays a major role in setting the position of a page in Google results.

Perhaps a cooking web site has a PR3 ranking, but one recipe page has a zero rank. A link to the recipe page from the homepage would be capable of passing some link juice to it internally, possibly raising its rank to a PR1. This will make it easier for searchers to find than equivalent pages that still have PR0, after search engines have identified and recorded the new linking structure.

Getting other web sites to add links to some types of pages (original content, homepage) is easier than others (republished content, promotional material). An optimized linking structure can help areas which would otherwise have difficulty receiving any link juice to gain it internally from pages that have inbound links to them from external web sites.

One way to determine which internal pages are in need of more link juice is to use a PageRank checker to see which pages have a low or zero ranking. Then make sure that the internal linking structure includes these pages and is passing sufficient benefits to them. It helps if the links are between related internal pages; this is more of a concern if the site is about multiple subjects.

In this context, it is important to think about the need for different internal pages to gain link juice and improve their search rankings. Webmasters should try passing better rankings to product, information (content), and promotional pages, while areas like the site map, privacy policy, and terms of service hold less importance in this respect.

Basically, the internal link structure of a web site can be fine-tuned to enhance the search traffic of specific pages, by passing more “juice” to them internally. However, this structure cannot act as a full replacement for quality inbound links from other web sites.

Here is a quick list of the best free Press Release websites.  For paid Press Release service, we also recommend PRWeb and PRNewswire.   While SEO can increase visibility and ultimately more views of your press release, we recommend that you write primarily for your audience.

Once the press release is complete, then we recommend using the headline and anchor text to focus on targeted keywords.  The headline should be focused on a primary keyword while one or two strategically placed links should link to the appropriate content on the website using keyword rich anchor text.  The About Us or profile section is a good place for a link to the home page, but you should focus on linking deeper into the site to more relevant content.

Here is our list of best free Press Release websites:

Press Releases can be a good tool for SEO and link building if used properly, if you know of any other good Free Press Release sites for SEO, let us know!

Obtaining links to your web site on other sites is an important part of SEO, or Search Engine Optimization. Links help achieve the success of SEO efforts in several different ways, although the first two are most important:

1. The text used in links will help define relevant search keywords for your site or blog. This is why a link with anchor text (the visible, clickable text in the link) like “Read more” or “Click here” isn’t as valuable to SEO as one with less generic wording. For example, an inbound link titled “Seattle, WA Cleaning Service” would be especially beneficial, because it improves the linked web site’s ranking in search results for each of these words (and the entire phrase).

2. Regardless of their anchor text, links help SEO by improving the search engine rankings of a web site in general. Search engines consider linking to a site as an indication that it is more highly recommended and/or credible. Google’s PageRank (PR) system, which plays a major part in determining the position in results different sites receive, is largely based upon the quantity and type of links to each site. Other major engines use similar criteria in determining rankings.

3. Obtaining a link on a popular site often enables a web page to get indexed by search engines more quickly than it would otherwise. This will particularly help SEO efforts when time-sensitive material must be promoted, such as a news article or short term special pricing. One way this is accomplished is when a link is posted to a social bookmarking service, and is highly rated by users to the point that it appears on one of the main pages.

4. Links also help SEO indirectly by increasing traffic to web sites (when people click on them). As more people use a web site and see links to it elsewhere, there is a better chance that more voluntary linking to it will occur on other pages, directories, blogs, and social bookmarking systems. This will additionally help SEO efforts, reducing the need to buy links or manually request that they be added. This factor is more relevant to entertaining or informational sites.

Basically, links help SEO by increasing the speed of search engine indexing, defining keywords which are related to the sites they link to, improving search engine rankings in general, and encouraging the creation of additional links.

When it comes to build links targeted to specific keywords, you need to keep in mind the relevance of the overall keyword phrase.  For example, let’s talk about a keyword phrase like ‘Credit Card Offers”

The Google ranking algorithm does use relevancy for its search results.  There are 3 main components – Technical, Content, and Links.  The first two items – Technical and Content – are primarily based on your website.  The third – Links – is the basis for Google PageRank, which is collective the most dominant of the 3 components.

You can find more information regarding PageRank here – > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PageRank

In this example, I might build links for “Credit Cards” and “Credit Card Offers”, but not “Offers”  This is because you can build relevance for ‘Keyword Phrase 1′ and ‘Keyword Phrase 2′, if both are relevant to your website.  However, the content and the linking will be harder to establish relevancy for “Offers” as a stand-alone phrase.

In addition, once you rank for a particular keyword like “Credit Cards”…Google will watch the behavior of its users to see if they like to visit your site after typing this keyword and it if seems like a majority of users are happy with the result, this also confirms relevance.  All of this is done by algorithms, Google states in several public releases and their methodology supports that ‘hand-editing’ doesn’t occur for top rankings.

There is quite a bit of debate in the SEO world on whether no follow links matter or not. If you are unfamiliar with the concept, a “no follow” is an HTML attribute value that is used to instruct some search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index.  Many people think this type of link shouldn’t help your site rank better in search engine results. Sites such as Wikipedia use them to reduce the effectiveness of certain types of search engine spam. This is thought to improve the quality of search engine results and to help prevent spamdexing.

But, there are two main reasons why no follow links are important. First no one really knows search engine algorithms work exactly. Google, Yahoo and the other search engines keep their rating algorithm a secret so even if they tell us that the links don’t pass authority there is no definite way to know how they impact ratings.

Secondly, Google spiders do follow a no follow link. This is evidenced because Traffic Marks reports only what Google gives it. However, we don’t know how important the link is to Google, only that they are indeed following it.

Finally, if there is a term that you want to rank for you should perform a search for it. If you find in those results that they all have a backlink in common, it makes sense to try and get the same links as the market leaders. Besides this links are some of the easiest to obtain. Ignoring them could be a big mistake if it’s done without any thought put into the decision.