Contextual link building is a highly effective link building strategy and research shows that Google values these type of links more highly, as they appear far more natural than a web page containing nothing more than a simple list of one way links. The reason contextual link building is so powerful is because the links are placed inside the relevant body text area of a web page rather than appearing out of context, as separate standalone one way links.

Contextual link building is more difficult than building traditional one way links, but can be achieved by writing blog comments and producing keyword rich articles, that include a couple of embedded links within the content. These articles should then be submitted to the various social media websites rather than specialist article directories, who do not allow embedded links within the main content.

The main reasons why contextual link building is more powerful than standalone One Way Links, are as follows:

• Contextual links are placed within the body text and are surrounded by other content
• Contextual links look more natural to Google and the other main search engines, such as Yahoo and Bing
• Contextual links carry more weight than traditional standalone one way links.
• Contextual links do not get removed over time and are considered a more permanent type of one way link.
• Contextual links will help to improve the number of visitors to your website

By developing a contextual link building strategy you will find that the overall link popularity of your website will improve dramatically along with your search engine ranking results.

f you found this post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Internet Marketing information, direct to your in box.

As ever, please feel free to comment on this post

The concept of a reciprocal link is quite straight forward. I link to your site providing you link back to my site; this is a simple exchange of links.

Before social media appeared on the scene, reciprocal linking was one of the main methods used to develop the Link Popularity of a website. Reciprocal links were considered to be a successful way to improve your search engine ranking results because links are a good indicator that other people like your website.

Over the last few years the popularity of reciprocal linking has declined in favour of one way links. This is where a website links to your site but you do not link back. It is widely believed that one way links carry more weight in the eyes of Google and other search engines, compared to reciprocal links. Many people will tell you that reciprocal linking does not work anymore and some even claim that reciprocal links can harm the link popularity of your site.

So, are reciprocal links still valuable and is it worth the effort trying to develop these types of links?

In my opinion, yes it is! Reciprocal links are still valuable and will contribute to the overall link popularity of your website. Try analysing the link profile of some of your competitors; you are likely to find a fair number of reciprocal links. These links will have been developed from many different sources including the following:

• Link exchange/resources pages
• Blogroll links
• Mutual contextual linking (for example between bloggers)
• Directory links from directories that require a backlink

But I have read that Google is against reciprocal linking!

Google is most definitely not against reciprocal linking. Google will reward those sites that have a natural link building profile, if all of your links are just One Way Links, this is not natural. Therefore having a mixture of both types of links will help to improve your ranking results.

The only thing that really matters is that you build high quality links from sites that Google and other search engines trust and will find relevant to your website. There is no reason for the search engines to make it any more complicated than this!

In addition to improving your search engine ranking results, reciprocal links can also generate targeted traffic from the websites you have exchanged links with.

If you found this  post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Internet Marketing information, direct to your in box.

As ever, please feel free to comment on this post.

I recently came across a recent blog post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog, which outlines a number of different link building methods that should be followed in order to secure high quality back links to your website.

According to Google there appears to be some confusion, especially among less experienced webmasters, on understanding the most effective link building methods.

The official Google viewpoint on how to build quality back links to your website, is explained as follows:

“If your site is rather new and still unknown, a good marketing technique is to get involved in the community around your topic. Interact and contribute on forums and blogs. Just keep in mind to contribute in a positive way, rather than spamming or soliciting for your site. Just building a reputation can drive people to your site. And they will keep on visiting it and linking to it. If you offer long-lasting, unique and compelling content — something that lets your expertise shine — people will want to recommend it to others. Great content can serve this purpose as much as providing useful tools.”

“A promising way to create value for your target group and earn great links is to think of issues or problems your users might encounter. Visitors are likely to appreciate your site and link to it if you publish a short tutorial or a video providing a solution, or a practical tool. Survey or original research results can serve the same purpose, if they turn out to be useful for the target audience. Both methods grow your credibility in the community and increase visibility. This can help you gain lasting, merit-based links and loyal followers who generate direct traffic and “spread the word.” Offering a number of solutions for different problems could evolve into a blog which can continuously affect the site’s reputation in a positive way.”

“It’s important to clarify that any legitimate link building strategy is a long-term effort. There are those who advocate for short-lived, often spammy methods, but these are not advisable if you care for your site’s reputation. Buying PageRank-passing links or randomly exchanging links  are the worst ways of attempting to gather links and they’re likely to have no positive impact on your site’s performance over time. If your site’s visibility in the Google index is important to you it’s best to avoid them.”

“Finally, consider making linking to your site easier for less tech savvy users. Similar to the way we do it on YouTube, offering bookmarking services for social sites like Twitter or Facebook can help spread the word about the great content on your site and draw users’ attention.”

If you found this link building post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Market News, direct to your inbox. As ever, please feel free to comment on this post.

Sometimes it is necessary to delete a page from your website either permanently of temporarily. When this happens it is important that you provide specific instructions to the search engines, in order to protect your Page Rank and back link profile. If you do not follow the correct procedure for this, then you will lose all of the ranking collateral and link popularity for the deleted page.

You can protect the Page Rank and link popularity of a specific web page by implementing a Meta Redirect. However, it is important to ensure that you set up the correct type of redirect to ensure that this does not have a negative impact on your rankings and prevent out of date web pages from passing on their full ranking and link popularity value.

There are three primary types of redirect:

301 Redirect
This type of redirect informs the search engines that your web page has been permanently redirected to a new URL. This is commonly used when redesigning websites and when web pages have been permanently deleted. The key benefit for this type of redirect is that it transfers all of the historical ranking authority including Page Rank and back links to your new URL. 301 redirects are considered to be the most SEO friendly.

302 Redirect
This type of redirect informs the search engines that your web page has been temporarily suspended. It is commonly used when it necessary to make major changes that requires a web page to be suspended for a period of time. 302 redirects do not transfer Page Rank, link popularity, or any other SEO value to alternative URL’s.

Meta Refresh Javascript Redirect
A Javascript redirect involves placing a snippet of Javascript code in the header of your website which redirects users to a new page after a specified number of seconds. Search engines do not like this form of redirect as it can be subject to abuse.

The actual code that is used to create these redirects will depend on your website/server configuration. It is therefore recommended that you seek further advice from your web designer on how to do this.

If you found this post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Market News, direct to your inbox. As ever, please feel free to comment on this post.

It is a well known and established fact that high rankings on Google and other search engines can only be achieved if a website has both optimised web page content and good quality inbound links.

Having your website professionally optimised is a worthwhile investment and will ensure that your SEO efforts produce the best return for you. However securing good quality, one way links, to your web page content as always been the more difficult part of the overall search engine optimisation process.

A tried and trusted link building method for many Webmasters and a relatively easy way to start building one way links to your site is via online directories. But do website directory submissions still have value when it comes to your search engine rankings?

I recently came across a case study which evaluates if it is still possible to increase the position of your website in Google’s search results, by using this method.

A Webmaster tested three pages of a website that did not have any inbound links pointing to them. These three pages were created to provide valuable content to search engines.

The three pages were submitted to three high quality, paid directories (Yahoo, BestOfTheWeb and Joe Ant) together with a range of free online directories.

Approximately 45 days after the links went live, the web pages had achieved increased visibility on search engines. Visits and conversions also increased and the tracking statistics indicated that at least 50 percent of the results could be attributed to the website directory submissions.

The final results concluded that there was a major improvement in increased traffic to the site and an increase in monthly sales conversions of 45%.

What does this mean for your website?

Securing One Way Links from online directories is still a worthwhile exercise and should be a fundamental part of any search engine optimisation strategy. However in order to be successful you must also build one way links from a wide range of other sources. Google will give a higher reward to those sites that have a more natural link building profile.

Links secured from Website Directory Submissions are only one part of the link building jigsaw. In order to out perform your competitors, you should also secure links from websites that are related to your content, such as blogs and social media sites like Facebook, Digg etc.

If you found this post helpful, why not subscribe to my Blog by RSS Feed or Email and receive free Professional SEO Tips and Market News, direct to your inbox. As ever, please feel free to comment on this post.