Successful websites are those that actually sell products
and services to their visitors for a profit. And, successful
webmasters are always working hard to bring even more visitors to
their website, so that they can make even more sales and profits.
Successful webmasters all share three essential traits. First,
they have developed processes for generating links to their
website. Secondly, they have figured out how to employ a strong
call-to-action with their advertising. And thirdly, they know how
to track and test their results so that they can fine-tune their
advertising.
ALL LINKS ARE NOT CREATED EQUAL
A human being will never see some links. Maybe the search engines
will construe those links as valuable links, but I would not
count on it. Google is a little too smart to give value to links
that human beings cannot find on their own.
Eyeballs are important to Google, and they should be important
to you too.
While some links will serve no use to you directly or in the
search engines, other links will prove to be far more valuable.
Some links will deliver hundreds or thousands of visitors a month
to your website.
Successful webmasters are those that can generate links that will
deliver hundreds or thousands of visitors to their websites each
month! It all adds up. The more valuable the links are that you
can develop, the more traffic you will serve. The more traffic
you serve, the more profitable your website will become.
LINK PLACEMENT STRATEGIES
There are many well-known methods for generating links to your
website. Five of the more noteworthy and effective are as
follows:
* Paid Links
* Viral Linking
* Article Marketing
* Paid Search
* Directory Placements
Here is an overview of each:
1. Paid Links
Usually, this type of advertising is delivered in banner formats,
but is also available in text links. Pricing for paid links
varies from cheap to incredibly expensive.
If you have an advertising budget equal to that of General
Motors, then you could afford to buy advertising in one of the
mega-websites such as: Yahoo! Games, Cnet.com, Disney.com, or
FoxNews.com.
These mega-websites can deliver your advertising message to
literally tens of thousands of people per day, but the costs can
be staggering.
As always, you will get what you pay for. If you buy advertising
on one of the mega-websites, you will get a lot of exposure for a
lot of money. If you buy advertising on one of the small traffic
websites, you will get a little bit of exposure for a little bit
of money.
2. Viral Linking
Viral Marketing is a concept that suggests that your marketing
message can pass from person-to-person, through existing social
networks. In theory, if you have a compelling marketing message,
people will be inclined to tell their friends, who will tell
their friends, etc. Just like a virus that passes from person-to-
person through human contact, your marketing message can also
spread like wildfire.
If you create a resource page on your website that is full of
valuable information and links to other resources, you will find
that people will want to share your page with others. And, if you
create free tools and services that are cool, clever or useful,
then people will also want to link to those as well. The better
your offering, the more likely people will be to link to it.
For example, according to MSN, there are 677 links to
the tool called the TPW Text-to-Hyperlink Converter:
http://thephantomwriters.com/link-builder.pl and over 98,000
links to a search engine submission tool called Free Web
Submission at: http://www.freewebsubmission.com
3. Article Marketing
If you can create an informational article, you can add
information to the end of that article that tells about you and
your website. Upon completion, you can offer your informational
article to publishers and webmasters as a Free Reprint Article.
This designation tells publishers and webmasters that they can
use your article in their ezine or website, so long as they keep
your Author Information and links intact.
While there are literally hundreds of places to place your
articles, these two are among the best:
http://www.EzineArticles.com
http://www.GoArticles.com
4. Paid Search
The basic structure of Pay-Per-Click search advertising is that
you can bid on keywords, and then the highest bidder on a search
keyword gets the top spot. The next highest bidder gets the
second spot, etc. The advertiser does not pay for advertising
unless someone actually clicks on his or her advertisement, and
then the advertiser is billed at the rate that the advertiser
has agreed to pay the search company.
PPC advertising can be purchased at:
Google Adwords - http://adwords.google.com
Yahoo! Overture - http://www.overture.com
MSN Advertising - http://advertising.msn.com
7Search Advertising - http://www.7search.com
The above engines are the most expensive PPC providers, but not
the only ones. There are literally hundreds of other PPC
providers on the Internet, although most serve considerably less
traffic.
5. Directory Placements
With directory websites, you are allowed to submit a 5-10 word
headline for your listing, and usually up to a 25-word
description to be placed with your link.
Directories are a good place to turn for highly targeted traffic,
since most users will navigate through the various categories to
find just the right websites to meet their needs.
A few of the highest traffic directories are:
http://www.Yahoo.com
http://www.Dmoz.org
http://www.ExactSeek.com
You can find another 200 specialized niche directories,
search engines, and article directories, by reviewing the
http://www.isedn.org list of member websites.
IN CONCLUSION...
If you build your website and then sit around waiting for traffic
to come to you, your website will certainly fail.
To be successful, do as other successful webmasters have done
before you --- build large numbers of links to your website and
aim to generate links that potentially offer real value.
Link building is time consuming, but it does offer real potential
for the profitability of your website. Link building is not easy,
but it is essential and worthwhile.
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