Designing Web Success

Do not get penalized or even banned from the search engines find
out how not to get banned by your links.

In my last article we talked about why we needed links to your
website, in this article we will cover some dos and don’ts.

Thanks to Google and now most of the other search engines there
is now a new kind of spam, these are link farms.

Because the search engines now look at link popularity every
website designer and promoter went out to get links to there
sites, the easy way to do this is to join a linking site, this
looked an easy task, but Google then said you will get penalized
or even banned if your found to have a link farm.

Website designers and promoters jumped and panicked at this and
some stopped all links that pointed out, this was a bit drastic.

The big question is what is a link farm? Or what is now known as
Stuffing?

Lets pretend your website sales gold, go with me here Im on a
role. You join a linking service and get 1000s of links on your
links page and so you have 1000s of links pointing to your
website, cool your shore to get to number one now.

If Google now comes to your site and sees 1000s of links, they
now will look to see if they are relevant to your site, which
sales gold. If your links are for dog food and windows you have
a link farm or stuffing.

Only have links like Gold Cleaning, Gold rings, things relevant
to your website else you could be penalized or even banned.

You can still have 1000s of links but all must be relevant.
Remember to have a link from your main site to the links page.

I hope you found this article of some help. Have fun and play
nice.

There is no other alternative to initiating a link exchange
process in order to garner maximum mileage for your web site.
There are plenty of benefits you can reap out of an effective
link exchange program. It is applicable to any company who
spends money on online advertising in any industry.

Link popularity is the ultimate parameter in achieving supreme
exposure on the web for your web site. Link popularity is
measured by the number and quality of the inbound links to your
site. Inbound links help to attain high search engine rankings
for your web site, while producing an invaluable traffic stream
from visitors clicking through on the links themselves. But your
goal will remain unrealized unless you implement an intelligent
link exchange strategy.

At the same time you should not go overboard in the quest of
getting more and more links. Quality should not be sacrificed at
the cost of quantity. You should utilize your link exchange
process so that it can win high quality links (which are links
from websites that are complementary to your business and have
high page ranks) for your web site, not abundant unproductive
links.

Considering inbound links to your web site are a decisive factor
for improved search engine ranking, you have to make sure that
your incoming links are of similar theme. The companies that you
link to should offer a product or service that is complementary
to yours, however not in competition. Irrelevant links will not
fulfil your objective.

Increased and Targeted Traffic

Effective link exchange can attract larger, quality and targeted
traffic to your web site. The link exchange process helps you
establish innumerable fruitful partners with other relevant web
sites. Thus, you can win more quality and targeted visitors from
your link partners. According to a June 2003 Forrester Research
survey report, ‘59% of Internet consumers find web sites through
links from another site’.

Enhanced Visibility

Targeted traffic and supreme search engine positioning
strengthen the visibility of your web site. An efficient link
exchange process can create awareness among web visitors about
your web site. A strong web presence is the key for survival on
the internet, especially when the cost and competition on
popular pay per click platforms such as Google Adwords and
Overture are continuously rising, and only represent a fraction
of potential customers.

The more you increase the link popularity of your web site, the
prospect of staying at higher search engine position for a
longer period of time becomes more likely. Your web site will be
listed in the search engine results if a keyword or phrase
related to your web site theme is submitted.

Cost-effective Promotion

If you want to promote your web site on a limited budget, link
exchange is the best option. Link exchange can save a lot of
money that you otherwise would have spent on other means of on
and offline advertising.

Link exchange is a very effective and inexpensive approach of
gaining popularity and prosperity on the web. It represents an
incremental step in the formation of a lasting web presence for
your business, allowing you to build an infrastructure to
generate ongoing traffic at a low cost. As more of your
competitors enter the market on the internet increasing the cost
for ad space, this process becomes an increasingly important
part of the business model for acquiring customers over the
internet.

Responsible Marketing

In today’s ultra competitive world of online marketing, it is
increasing harder to reach your target audience at a relative
low cost, while staying within the guidelines of the present
laws. This is why organizations such as the Anti Spam League
promote responsible ways of marketing like link exchange. The
Anti Spam League has been created to fight abuse on the
internet, but also to educate website owners on the responsible
aspects of online marketing. To learn more visit
www.Anti-Spam-League.org.

Driving in Japan legally has recently afforded new challenges to
foreigners from China, Brazil and the United States. Released in
November 2002 and updated in February 2003, Traffic Act Article
107-2, has begun to create many problems for foreigners.

Until June 2002, Foreigners driving in Japan (who held a valid
drivers license from their home country) could apply for an
international driving permit (IDP) and drive in Japan
permanently. Since that time however, IDPs are only valid for
one year. If a foreigner stays in Japan for more than one year
and decides to reapply for an IDP, they would have to leave
Japan for at least 90 days in order for the IDP to be legal upon
their return.

Those visiting Japan for a short time, of course IDPs are the
way to go. They are quite cheap (around $10-20). Beware however,
there are many sites on the internet that offer IDPs for several
hundred dollars. These are scam sites and are to be avoided at
all costs.

Quite a few countries have a much easier time in obtaining a
valid Japanese drivers license when compared to the United
States. Citizens from Australia, New Zealand, Britain,
Switzerland, Canada or Germany can simply have their license
translated and officiated after a minimal fee and an eye check.

Why are American citizens screwed over? You may check this link
found on the US Embassy in Japan website
http://japan.usembassy.gov/e/acs/tacs-drive.html and find out
why. If you take the time to read the reasons why as well as the
requirements Japan is asking for in order to overturn this new
law you may very well cry, or laugh. If you don’t want to take
the time to read the reasons and requirements; in short, it’s a
better idea to try and take the actual Japanese driving test
instead of waiting for this law to be overturned.

Let us rewind to an actual experience of mine.

Blissfully unaware that my IDP was considered invalid, (I had
been living in Japan for three years at the time) I parked for a
few minutes in a no parking zone (I drive a 50cc scooter, for
its sheer convenience). BIG MISTAKE. I come back to find I have
a parking ticket. “Oh darn, I have a parking ticket. Oh well, I
may as well go pay the small fine and bite the bullet on this
one”. I take my scooter to a police station and show them my
passport and IDP. After much difficulty in communication it
turns out that I cannot legally drive and I must go to the
city’s main police office a few days later so they can have a
translator explain to me exactly what needs to be done.

I return home to find out why they said I am unable to drive in
Japan, and hop on the net to do some research. After a short
time I come to find out that I can be fined up to 300,000 yen
(about $2,800) or spend up to a year in prison. Needless to say,
my eyes were bulging out of their sockets.

A few days later, I go to this police station. I am sweating
bullets and to make matters worse they do NOT have a translator
to explain the situation. Fortunately, I have a more then basic
understanding of Japanese so I am able to understand that I
cannot drive legally in Japan with an IDP. Luckily this fairly
new law, that has been such a pain for foreigners, is far from
being well known. I am let off with a warning and told I cannot
drive until I get an actual Japanese drivers license.

Fast forward about a month.

Discovering that there is only one book in Japan that has been
translated into English regarding the laws of the road in Japan,
I am forced to buy it. This book is about 90% useless. There was
a whole two pages about driving motorcycles/scooters in Japan. I
am fortunate enough to have some Japanese friends sit me down
with a Japanese language motorcycle practice test book and ask
me some questions that may be on the test I was preparing for.
In less than a week, I was ready to tackle this test. Or so I
thought.

The Japanese scooter test is made up of 48 questions. 45
questions or more must be correct in order to pass with a time
limit of 30 minutes. Let me remind you that Japan has been
required to have this test in English since the changing of the
law so at least that was one thing in my favor. “Piece of cake,
done in 15 minutes”! Or so I thought again.

Not since Shakespeare’s time where double negatives considered a
proper grammatical form for English! This test took me for so
many twists and turns with its EXTREMELY poor translation and
its “no” + “no” = “yes” terminology that I felt I was going to
vomit. I took the entire 30 minutes to complete this test with a
certainty that I was going to fail. At least I got that part
right.

So, to all the American citizens living in Japan and wanting to
drive or currently driving illegally, I would suggest taking the
driving test in Japanese instead of English. You will likely
score higher. S.B.

One of the most effective ways to promote your business online,
especially if you use search engine optimization to build
traffic, is linking.

However, as a certified Web CEO professional, and someone who
also uses only “white hat” optimization strategies, I see people
make a lot of mistakes when using this technique.

Below are some of the strategies that I use to make linking more
effective, as well as raise my rankings in the search engines.

1. Do your homework first. You’re probably wondering what “white
hat” techniques are.

“White hat” techniques are techniques that will always work with
the search engines, like writing articles, blogs, and press
releases, and optimizing individual pages for the search engines.

These are the primary techniques I use in addition to linking
because they work.

Just ask Tinu Abayomi-Paul, the owner of
http://www.freetraffictip.com. Tinu is an expert when it comes
to using search engines to build traffic to her sites.

She wrote me the other day to thank me for “inspiring her”. I’m
not sure exactly what that means, but I do know that she uses a
lot of the same techniques I do to promote my sites. She now has
over 90,000 relevant entries in Google, more than a lot of the
top “gurus” on the internet.

The fact is, the more pages you have listed in the search
engines, and the more links you have pointing back to your site,
the more likely you are to be found.

Although writing articles, blogs, press releases, and optimizing
pages definitely works, you still have to do your homework. This
means actually doing a search in the search engines to find out
how sites get to the top, i.e. what keywords they use, how their
pages are optimized, etc.

I use Alexa, http://www.alexa.com, for this because it allows me
to look at traffic stats, as well as see what sites are linked
to eachother.

To get started, search for the keywords you are targeting. Take
a good look at the sites at the top. This includes studying the
keywords, titles, and descriptions they use in their headers.
Also, read the text of the pages. It’s not that hard to optimize
your page(s). Just write search engine friendly content that
repeats your keywords. Make your content easy for your readers
to read and understand though.

Now this may sound juvenile, but again, it works. Tools like
Keyword Density Analyzer,
http://www.keyworddensityanalzyzer.com, and Web CEO,
http://www.smallbusinesshowto.com/ht/search.html, can tell you
if you are on the right track.

You can also read Linking Matters,
http://www.linkingmatters.com. This short, and free ebook in
PDF, will give you more tips on linking. 2. Link to
complementary sites. I get link requests all the time, and I
have to reject about half of them. The reason why is that I
won’t link to sites that have nothing to do with mine.

I offer small business, internet marketing, and search engine
optimization and submission products and services. Links to
quote sites, joke sites, and shoe sites don’t fit with this.

The key here is to understand that not only does Google, the
most important of all the search engines, look at how many links
are pointing back to your site, but they also look at the
relevance of the links.

Sites that are similar, or complementary to yours, give you more
credibility and higher page rank than having tons of sites
pointing back to you that have nothing to do with your site.

Make the links pointing back to your site relevant.

3. Choose relevant, highly searched for, low competition
keywords for your anchor text. This tip relates to tip four.
Before you start sending out link requests to other webmasters,
make sure that you’re targeting the right keywords. Not only are
a lot of relevant links important, but your keywords should be
keywords that will get you traffic.

4. Change your anchor text. Recently Google decided that links
with the same text between your {{a href=”"}} and {{/a}} text
should be different. Too many links pointing back to your site
that had the same text “looks” like spam. This doesn’t mean it
is spam, and sometimes, you don’t have control over how others
link back to your site.

However, if you decide to exchange links with others, vary your
anchor text.

5. Try other alternatives to software. Although there are many
software programs out there you can use to help you automate
this process, I caution you to be careful when using this kind
of software. Although it may speed things up for you, you may
also end up with a lot of links pointing back to you that have
no relevance. Also, these programs really won’t help you as much
as you think if you don’t change your anchor text once in awhile.

If you do choose to use software to automate the process, make
sure that you personalize your emails. Again, do your homework
and make sure that you are actually sending out email to sites
that complement yours. No one likes to receive emails that say
“Dear Webmaster”.

Using a directory script on your site can help you because
others can visit your site and add their links. Just make sure
that you check your directory once in awhile to see who is
linking to you. Also, make sure that you set up your script in
such a way that others have to have a link pointing back to you
first before your script will accept their site.

Link Management Assistant -
http://www.dirfile.com/link_management_assistant.htm

You can also find reciprocal link exchange sites like Link
Metro, http://www.linkmetro.com. Sites like this will allow you
to choose your partners, search for new partners, and exchange
links without being bombarded with email or generic requests.

Regardless of how you develop a linking strategy for your site,
you need to develop one if you want high rankings in the search
engines.

Once your site is launched, half your battle is won. What lies
ahead is the interesting and challenging part of the game.
Learning the basics of HTML, creating pages etc actually gets
boring for some and they leave it at that.. But once you are
beyond the basics, life gets better. The next step is promoting
your website. There are various ways to do it.

Press-Release: There are various websites
dedicated to press-releases and announcements. You can submit
your site briefings to them. What you have to make sure is, that
your press release is not a general, ordinary, uninteresting
paragraph. In such a case these websites are most likely not to
publish it.  It has to have a niche, news-value plus useful and
interesting content. Make sure of an informative yet interesting
headline. Likewise for body copy. There are various websites
dedicated to press-releases and announcements. You can submit
your site briefings to them. What you have to make sure is, that
your press release is not a general, ordinary, interesting
paragraph. In such a case these websites are most likely not to
publish it. It has to have a niche, news-value plus useful and
interesting content Make sure of an informative yet interesting
headline. Likewise for body copy.

Link Exchange: Exchaning links with sites of
similar/ complementary theme is the single most important and
guaranteed technique to attain link popularity and move up in
search engines. You must try and link to relevant sites as far
as possible. You should also make sure that link pages of your
own site are categorized properly and that they do not have more
than 25 links on one page.

Writing Articles: Write articles related to your
main theme and post them to articles’ directories. There are
many websites exclusively dedicated to articles. You can use
articles available on such websites on your website, which may
have been written by webmasters like you and me, and can post
articles which other people can read or reproduce on their
sites. The more people re-print your article on their sites, the
better. It gives you the advantage of one way linking. The
webmasters who use your articles, will in reciprocation place
your sites link at the bottom of article along with your name.
You can also promote your websites by hiring  professional
companies, who will do all the above and more for you and will
charge you a certain amount for it. Some use software, some
claim to do it manually. Depending on your budget you hire them.
There are many more ways in between to promote your sites
further which you learn as you proceed. Be sure about one thing,
having a website on the net is pointless unless its reaching
your target audience. And for it to reach them or have surfers
visiting your site, promoting your site is a must.

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.

Everyone who manages or builds websites knows how exchanging
links can be time consuming. You must invite people to link to
you and other webmasters, ask you to link to them. Link
exchanging is one of the slower tasks you must do as a webmaster
or your website will float in space with know one ever knowing
that you exist!

I can’t over emphasize the importance of search engine
optimization. The more websites that you link to, the better
your website ranking will be. One important fact is that 90% of
all websites have 10 or less links to them, thus meaning that
10% of all websites get all of the internet’s traffic while the
rest are left in internet space. If you are new to website
optimization then my new found linking strategy will help you
get started without the time consuming emailing webmasters back
and forth. And to us who have been doing website optimization
what a great relief of hours during the week.

I discovered a new company who takes link exchanging to the
next level. LinkMa
ster.com. Your entire linking process is fully automated
thanks to the people behind LinkMaster. There are currently as
of this article 6,691 subscribers to their linking
service. What does this mean to you as a webmaster? What this
means is that your website will be linked to 6,691 other
websites immediately upon signing up for there service. I have
been with them now for just a couple of months and have seen my
website traffic increase and my page rank increase. If you are
interested in increasing your web presence then I recommend you
give LinkMa
ster.com. a serious look!

LinkMa
ster.com. is a unique link exchange service unlike any
other on the Internet. They are the original automated linking
service. Their system works exactly the opposite of most other
link exchange services. Instead of requiring you to submit
individual link exchange requests one-by-one to all of their
members, they instantly add your website link onto all of their
6,691 member’s websites immediately. Then they let you decide
which types of websites that you do not wish to exchange links
with (if any) by using their special filtering system. Their
link exchange directory is maintained by a team of human editors
to ensure that the websites in the network comply with their
standards. This company has got a winner and it is totally
hosted by their servers. Your link pages are either in asp or
php format, which has very easy setup instructions included .

Blogging is merely keeping of a log at a website. It is a
combination of the words “Web” and “log”. Blogging is carried
out through a blogging software that maintains the daily posts
on the site. It doesn’t take long to set up blogs and once
installed you can update it easily with lots of content daily.

To keep a blog is simply to maintain a page on your site where
there can be daily posting of new content by the website owner
or the visitors to the site. Blogging has one particular
striking feature - the information there is always kept fresh as
there are daily entries.

Our interest in blogs is in its search engine placement
significance. Blogs can fetch you a lot of web traffic without
any effort at all.

Search engines tend to rank sites with content favorably. Since
a blog posts fresh content to the site on daily basis, the
information at such a place is kept fresh and current making it
a preferred destination for visitors. The web is about
information - current and meaningful ones so as the information
in the blog gets updated constantly with rich information so
does the ranking on the search engines increase.

Some blogging tools worth looking into include:

Blogger.com - http://www.blogger.com Blosxom -
http://www.blosxom.com/ Drupal - http://www.drupal.org Geeklog -
http://www.geeklog.net/ LittleHJ - http://www.littlehj.com/
ModBlog - http://www.modblog.com/ Movable Type -
http://www.movabletype.org/ PHPNuke - http://www.phpnuke.org/
pMachine - http://www.pmachine.com/ Radio UserLand -
http://radio.userland.com/ WordPress - http://wordpress.org/

Like in traditional sea, your blogging should be around a
central theme or keyword. Too many themes may dilute the
consistency of your content and score you down the lane of SEO.
Sticking to a central theme will help you to enrich the content
of your pages and get favoring scoring in the search engine
ranking algorithms.

The most popular blogging tool on the market today is WordPress
which can be downloaded from their website at
http://wordpress.org/download. Installation is simple and does
not require extensive knowledge of programming languages.

Blogging is being used by many sites as a way to passively draw
targeted traffic and search engine rankings. Installing one can
help you draw web traffic and get noticed quickly by the engines.

Good luck with your website, Reginald