SEO tips = better search engine ranking

A new kind of link exchange spam

I'm sorry to bother you, but I was just about to send you a link exchange offer for your site but I cannot send it to your current email, since you're using Gmail.

Let me explain - due to recent changes in Google algorithm and their strict policy against link exchanges I cannot send you my offer to an email account that is visible to Google.

Yay! instead of spammy link exchange offers I'll now be getting spammy emails asking me for alternative emails to spam with link exchange offers.

What to do, what not to do when building links

Here's a good article on how to build links. It covers issues like spam (bad), buying links from directories (good if the directory is good), getting links from pics with good alt text (yummy), getting links from top ranking sites (good), getting links with different and even irrelevant anchor text (good), and more.

Big trouble for selling little links

Matt Cutts wants to do terrible things to people who sell links. So far we're at 338 comments and counting - quite an uproar!

Has anyone turned in a link seller yet? I swear the next spam mail I get...

Matt Cutt's pokes fun at v7n

I recently wrote about a new text link buying service by v7n on my other blog. Matt Cutts also wrote about it and then launches into a trip down memoray lane. The moral of his story is that spam will be found and spammers delisted. However the spam in his story is nothing at all like buying text links...

And interestingly if you do a Google search or read the comments on Matt's blog you'll find that Google is letting spammers screw their search results.

A friendly game of tag prompts me to reveal some deep dark secrets

I returned from my LARPing vacation to find 3 messages waiting for about being "tagged". Apparently this is a new blogger game, where I'm now obligated to tell you 5 things about myself that you don't know and tag 5 more bloggers, hopefully prompting them to do the same.

First, the taggers: NeO, John Scott, and Dustin. Thanks I think.

Things you didn't know about me:

1. When I was a lonely college kid I used to go drink in order to build up courage to ask women (mostly ones I knew) to marry me.

2. One of my dreams is to complete a couple of fantasy novels I've started. I'm not a diligent writer though so I thought starting a fantasy writing blog would spark something. No luck so far...

3. I'm quickly becoming a karaoke room addict. All the CDs on my Christmas list had songs for karaoke on them.

4. I resisted technology longer than most of my friends and didn't start emailing or going online until I was a sophomore or junior in college - 1997 or 1998 I guess.

5. I really want a radio control car but I keep not buying one because I don't want to take time out of my schedule to play with it once I get one. It sounds so silly as I write it, that I think I should go buy one soon.

Tag: Gordon (because you can never get too much LARP stuff), Ben (I like his 5 questions thing so much I forgive him for being a Redskins fan), Jason (another good guy who roots for the wrong team), David (what can I say? It's an NFC East party since we have no playoff victories to celebrate), and Sue (who shares a profession with me).

New sports site gets broken PR

Reports of broken Google PageRank have been coming in from all over the web. My new site is a great example. With 49 weak backlinks listed in Yahoo, My NFL officiating site is PR 6. It should be a 2, maybe 3 in my opinion.

I have a few other PR 6 sites, one with nearly 20,000 backlinks of which at least half are better quality than the best link going to my new sports site.

Travel site's crazy PageRank?

I have according to Yahoo, 738 links coming into my travel Amazon bookstore. The home page is PR3. However, my travel sites page is PR 4. That's so weird because I have so few links from other sites pointing at the internal pages and so many pointing at the homepage. Other pages on the main menu are also PR 4 like my Europe travel books page. OK, I can understand that.

But why are pages that get a link from the homepage and the travel sites page (but not the other pages) also show PR 4 like this Hawaii site page? And with the same links, my advertising page shows PR 0. Also showing PR 0 is this travel DVD page with a link from the homepage (and that's the only link). Oh and now the hompeage is PR 4. What's going on here? I swear it was PR 3 a moment ago.

Now I see. The coder who did this site for me was not an SEO... It seems that my domain/ is PR 3 while my domain/index.php is PR 4. Rookie mistake that I should have seen a long time ago. I still don't see why 501 internal links = PR 4 when 783 externals = PR 3 but I just have to live with that ambiguity...

How to search for link partners

Here are some phrases you can search for to find link partners. The quotations are used to make sure results are relevant, but keep in mind that some people don't use articles, so there are really two versions. For example "Add a link" + keyword AND "Add link" + keyword.

"Add a link" + "your keyword(s)"
"Add a site" + "your keyword(s)"
"Add a URL" + "your keyword(s)"

"Submit a link" + "your keyword(s)"
"Submit a site" + "your keyword(s)"
"Submit a URL" + "your keyword(s)"

"Suggest a link" + "your keyword(s)"
"Suggest a site" + "your keywords(s)"
"Suggest a URL" + "your keyword(s)"

"your keywords" + "directory"
"your keywords" + "directories"
keyword reciprocal
keyword exchange
keyword add site
keyword resources
keyword links

"your industry" + add url
"your industry" + add site
"your industry" + add link
"your industry" + suggest url
"your industry" + suggest site
"your industry" + add link

"related sites" + your keyword
"related urls" + your keyword

If your site doesn't look too commercial, do a search for your keywords on .edu domains. Many of these are woefully out of date, but some are current and happy to link to high quality sites that expand on their content.

The purple cow of link exchange requests

If you're familiar with Seth Godin's Purple Cow theory, the idea that to stand out you have to be really different, you might appreciate this link exchange request:

Hi,

This is Jonathan, the webmaster for http://www.eslsociety.com . . .

I've literally been awake all night, scouring the web for other esl/efl related sites so that I can contact people like you about an important opportunity for esl/efl related webmasters.

Did you know that the next Google pagrank update is scheduled to happen right around the 25th of this month?

As you know, pagerank is an important factor in determining how high up your site ranks in Google Search. The higher up in the results, the more traffic you get. Being in the first page of Googles search results for ESL/EFL and related terms can explode your websites popularity and traffic overnight.

These pagerank updates with Google usually happen only once every three months or so. Therefore, it's really important that anyone who is trying to increase their search presence and traffic act NOW.

What determines pagerank? There are lots of thinks, such as on page search engine optimization, etc. But the #1, MOST IMPORTANT FACTOR in obtaining high Google pagerank is relevant links to your site.

What makes a link more relevant? There are all sorts of things. The most important, are the pagerank of the site that's linking to you, and the anchor text of the link. For example, if you want to rank for the term EFL, you need good links from high quality sites associated with "EFL", and you need those links to be in the form of: a href =yoursite.com EFL Site!

The more high quality links you have from great sites, with relevant anchor text, the higher up you'll climb in the search results.

So here's my offer to you: You can exchange links with The World ESL Society automatically. We've got a special script up at http://www.eslsociety.com and all you have to do is enter the URL of your link to us, and your website address, description, etc. As long as it finds the link back to ESL Society, it will automatically publish your link.

I've been quietly working behind the scenes for this next update for months now. I want to show you what I've gotten done so far. Go to http://www.iwebtool.com/pagerank_prediction right now. This site polls the various Google Data-Centers to predict your pagerank for the next update. If you enter www.eslsociety.com you'll see that we're shooting from a PR of 0 (zero) to a predicted 5 on this update! I'm really pleased about this, and I expect that by the time the update comes around, it'll be closer to 7 or 8, with all of the off-site SEO that I'm doing right now. Check out www.eslteachertraining.com too. Same thing. Heck, better check your site while you're there!

I figure that once the links are live, it will take Google at least 5-7 days to get those links indexed. That's cutting it awfully close to the 25th . . .

We've got a very limited time to do this before the next Google PR Update. This one is going to be BIG! So let's act now. Go to http://www.eslsociety.com and set up the link exchange right now. If you have any problems, just let me know and I'll be happy to manually create the link.

. . And while I've got you here - I want to offer you another way to get a great link from a site that will be at LEAST PR6 for ESL/EFL with this next update and help you make ALOT OF MONEY!:

We're almost ready for the public launch of our ESL Teacher Certification program at http://www.eslteachertraining.com and right now we're just getting the site ready, and finishing up with reviews of our content/course delivery system from some of the best names in the ESL/EFL/Linguistics industry. This course is really going to revolutionize the EFL Industry, as a whole, and it MUCH more difficult than most of the other online certification programs out there. The delivery is also done with a totally unique and fresh approach, which utilizes peer review, teamwork, heavy research and writing, etc.

What we're looking for is people who can provide brief reviews of the training course. 2 or 3 sentences should be fine.

Now - We're not going to give anyone access to the actual course anymore for free. That phase of testing is done, and we've tweaked the material based on the suggestions of those professionals who have reviewed the material for us. But, you can get a really good idea of the content of the course by downloading this free e-book that' we provided at the onset of this project:

(click to download now!)

You can feel free to distribute this to anyone you like via your website, blog, mailing list, etc. to help you build valuable relationships with your readers. This is a great collection of material, and will really benefit the novice, and even advanced ESL/EFL teacher.

And if that's not good enough, here are the GREAT parts of the offer:

If you provide us with a simple review, your name, possibly a photograph if you're willing, and your website address, we'll put ANOTHER link back to your site on http://www.eslteachertraining.com. Did you check the pagerank prediction for this site too? It's going to go through the roof in a matter of days. That's free links from two sites that are going to rank HIGH for ESL/EFL, and will continue to rank higher and higher.

Now here comes the part of the offer that will really get you motivated. We've set up an affiliate program for the ESL/EFL Teacher certification course. The course itself is ready to go, and we're ready to accept new sign ups, but we're waiting a few more days to fill out the advertising and website. Then we'll launch a massive advertising campaign.

Lots of people are looking for ways to monetize their ESL/EFL related site. The World ESL Society exists to serve the broader English teaching community, and we've always tried to give away as much as possible toward that end. So we've set up this affiliate program to help you make more money with your site.

Our Affiliate Program Pays
75.00$ on Level1 of Every Sale!

That's right. 75 dollars per sign-up! Do you think you're going to make that kind of money with Adsense, Amazon, or whatever other affiliate scheme you may be trying right now? NO WAY. Take a look at the commission that other online TEFL course providers are offering. IT'S A PITTANCE! We're teachers too, and we know how tight money can be on our salaries, and that's why we've decided to create the largest commission payout in the ESL/EFL industry.

So let's get busy.

If you want to exchange links with the World ESL Society and send your traffic through the roof starting with this next Google update, go to http://www.eslsociety.com and set up your reciprocal link.

If you want an even more valuable 1 way link from eslteachertraining.com, just take a look at the book above, which is the basis for our courses, and give us a review with your name, photo if possible, and website address. Send it to info@eslsociety.com and your link will be up within a day!

If you want to start earning huge comission checks just for referring people to a valuable service that will strengthen their career path, and make them better teachers, go to http://www.eslteachertraining.com and sign up for our affiliate program right now. And feel free to distribute that free e-book as well. The people who have seen it already have all given really great feedback, and really seemed to appreciate it. I know of several recruiters and schools who are using it to help their teachers, as well.

Less enamored with rentacoder.com

Not too long ago I was postin aout how I found people willing to my link building cheap on rentacoder.com. However there may still be some truth in the old "you get what you pay for" adage.

I've got three projects now. 2 link builders from India and one from Ukraine. The one from Ukraine recently announced he had my 100 links (107 actually) and that I should check them to make sure they were acceptable. I almost didn't bother but I said why not?

So I spent an hour or so checking the links he got for me and found over 50 that were no good because they had one of these problems:

1. Placed on pages with more than 40 outgoing links.
2. Placed on pages not indexed by Google.
3. Placed on pages with non-travel related links.

Those were the three criteria I set forth in my bid request. I should have also said no link exchange systems, meaning those things where you trade links with 50 sites at once and each link page is pretty much identical. You'd think a professional link builder would know better, and this guy had very high ratings...

Reciprocal links

I recently put up two new rent a coder bid requests. One was 60 reciprocal links, 150 dollars. The next was 70 for 150 dollars. Both bid requests got plenty of quality bids so in the future I may go even cheaper.

Actually I recently got some spam about SEO but I figured I ask about reciprocal link building. I offered him 100.00/month for 100 recips/month and he went for it, no haggling. Now he'll be using Zeuss (which I tried once but had trouble getting used to) so I guess that makes things a little cheaper than somone sorting through link partners by hand, but it is still very cheap.

Quick PR

In the old days it took forever for a new page on eslgo.com to get it's toolbar PR. Not these days.

I recently set up a vocabulary class that featured a link to a sauna site as the lone advertiser. I gave the page verypage links and voila! 2 weeks later the page is PR 5.

I see this as a positive bcuse I can offer people a very powerful link on a page full of relevant content. I wish there I could find sites offering me the only external link on a page with a bunch of content about my site and good link popularity....

Cheap link building

So I really want more traffic for my travel blog but I don't have the inclination to do my own link building. I posted a message on sitepoint that I'd pay 3.00/reciprocal link and had 3 responses in 2 days.

One to the people who responded has a lot of experience doing SEO and link building so I'm giving him the job. For me this si great. All the other link building services I've found want substantially more than 3.00/link...

I spend my time developing content, which I enjoy much more than link building . My site still gets its links.

Quick PR update

We're used to waiting 4+ months for Google PR updates so the last one seemed a bit ahead of schedule. Despite adding at least 100 links (since the last PR update) I was unable to maintain my PR 7 on ESL go. otherwise nothing much seems to have changed despite my link building efforts. since one of the new links is from a PR 7 page and since there are many new (less powerful) links I'm surprised that the toolbar shows 6 rather than the old 7 (which was nice to look at).

Now we're indexed

ESL Ad, my AWS full store now has 8,230 pages indexed by Google. That came from 2 PR 6 links from subpages of ESL go, some directory listings at Jtrotta.com including deep links and few blog links (like from this blog).

New exercise web site

A new SEO experiment about how to get Google to index a new site quickly. I've linked to my new site, www.exerciseplaza.com from two pages of www.jtrotta.com (both are new pages but will likely be PR3), a PR 3 page in GoGuides.org, and a PR 4 page in Seoma. All links go to the homepage.

Currently zero pages indexed. Let's see what happens.

Easy link exchanges

You can now trade links with this blog via my Webmaster link directory. This has a link from the homepage of this site, every individual entry page of this site, and several links fromoother sites.

I've also gotten my Business and finance link directory up and running for those of you who wish to trade links with my stock blog.

Manual directory submission service

This directory submission service is designed for webmasters who want permanent links to their sites and content pages for increased link popularity and search engine rankings. My specialty is finding deep links to your most important content pages at a reasonable price.

The first requirement is that you have a budget of $250.00 or more. This is a one time fee; the directories I'll be submitting to only require a one time fee so this 250.00 is not a recurring charge.

The second requirement is that you tell me which pages you want to promote and their keyword targets. You may choose to promote your index page and/or several contnet pages.

The third requirement is a list of directories you are already listed in. If you are already taking advatage of the directories I use I will refund your payment.

The directories I prefer include Seoma.net, my own Jtrotta.com, and Octopedia.com. These directories can provide deep links to your favorite content pages and are excellent values. Seoma.net and Jtrotta.com accept content page listings in the directory categories while Octopedia.com allows deep links in a details page.

I also consider Sevenseek.com, which will link to web pages as well as web sites. The value of a listing here often depends on where your site fits in the directory hierarchy and the number of links on each page.

And I consider Uncoverthenet.com, which offers deep links on a business card page (deep links used to be offered from the directories category pages and these were more valuable). In some cases this is still a good value. It is also possible to pay less money for a listing without deep links on the business card page.

I normally submit to GoGuides.org. They only link to your index page but depending on which category your site fits in and the number of sites already listed, this directory is often a good value.

Once you've paid, I'll get to work. I'll choose the paid inclusion web directories that offer the best value links for your site's index page and/or the content pages you choose to promote.

You can buy now by making a PayPal payment to gumpersag@yahoo.com or you can ask questions about this directory submission service by emailing jtrotta@gmail.com.

Waiting for Google

A Yahoo! search for "google pr update" (no quotes) turns up message boards filled with irritated webmasters. Interestingly some of the results are quite old. Personally, I'm more interested in seeing the SERPs change as Google hasn't updated these either and they are not particulary good at the moment.

A lot of speculation goes that Google has updated PR but not made this information available yet. Having just sey up many quality links for my direcotry (which lists over 100 sites now) I hope that Google is doing it right now so they see all my new links.

More annoying webmasters and SEOs

First I get an email from vicky@seo... that went something like "Hi I'm Arnie and I'd like to invite you to link to my site because we sell high quality stuff" (no reciprocal link was offered).

Then I get a link request from one of those I'll write your term paper sites. I told him to fill out my form if he wants to link with me. He writes back "Link to me first". I said "You came to me because I have a PR 4 links page that your competitors are on and you're not. If you want the link fill out my form."

264 links in 5 minutes

I'm experimenting with a new tool for my network marketing blog:

Some of you may remember that I needed a plan. Well I still don't have one but I decided to try this out. It's pretty easy to sign up and if you act very quickly you can sign up for half price (4.48/month). In return for that money and a link to some remotely hosted directory, I have 264 links pointing at me.

Each new site will get to link to me also and I doubt I'm the last person to sign up. When they get to 500 members people start paying full price and things may slow down. Even then I don't think they'll stop.

Now I'm guessing that most people will choose the remote hosting and that all these links will come from basically duplicate pages on one IP. Eventually I think that will matter, but I'm expecting some benefits in the near term.

Crazy webmasters

The craziest email I've gotten in a while came from someone who wanted to trade links with me. His links page had a few hundred totally unorganized links on it so I told him I would need to be on a better links page, organized and with fewer links. He replied "Sorry, but we have only one link page and we are trying to have many many links."

New PR

My NuSkin online store and my network marketing blog are now PR 3. I haven't decided what my plan is with these pages so this PR is kind of accidental.

I do have to begin promoting these sites at some point - This business can really help people who find me on the web - I mean the right person finding my network marketing blog could become a millionaire but that won't happen to anyone finding one of my other sites. From a personal perspective, network marketing can and does bring in a lot more money than all my web sites combined...

Why I hate reciprocal linking!

Even with my new directory other webmasters still manage to waste plenty of my time! I recently had to write this to someone who has submitted their link and had it approved by me:

The link is here - http://eslgo.com/language/Language-schools-Italian

Go look for yourself if you don't beleive me!

---------- Original Message -------------
Subject: Re: New link added
Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 08:59:17 +0100
From: "Scuola Porta D'Oriente" <>
To: <>

we added your link in our link section
http://www.porta-doriente.com/italian%20language%20school/links.htm

but you didn't add ours in the Italian language school section and you
continue to send us e-mail confirmation as that below.

please, put a link to our website otherwise yours will be removed.

Sponsored by Pets for Sale, a good place to advertise extra dogs and cats.

Expensive reciprocal links

Some offshore spam recently came my way about paying for reciprocal links. I've heard about cheap offshore link building so I responded and got these prices:

USD 7 Per PR3 Link
USD 10 Per PR4 Link
USD 15 Per PR5 Link
USD 21 Per PR6 Link

For one way links that's pretty good, but for reciprocal links? It seems too expensive.

Tracking backlinks

I meant to do this a couple of days ago when I signed up for the link coop, but better late than never. My stock market blog currently shows:

Google: 305
Yahoo: 721
MSN: 407
Altavista: 735
Alltheweb: 632
Hotbot: 57

Those numbers should go up quite a bit since I put 5 links on each of about 250 or more pages of one of my other blogs. In google for stock market idea, I'm #1. Stock market investment blog = 1, stock market blog = 1, stock blog = 2, investment blog = 1, stock market investment = 198

Sponsored by Link popularity checker

Having an active message board is worth a lot

Think of all the nice anchor text that you can put on an active message board. It can really help your site; thousands of relevant pages all linking to your main page with ideal anchor text! Well I want that for my new site, so here's an offer:

Before I start talking to myself on my health message boards I thought I'd ask for some help. I need moderators, and active forum members and am willing to pay in links.

Give me the URL of your site and I'll tell you where I can put your link. I can probably find you a nice PR 4 or PR 5 page, hopefully on a relevant topic, and promise that you'll be the only external link on the page.

Do you want to see an example? Look at the bottom of my passive modals grammar class (I know the colors don't seem to match but I'll soon have a new color scheme and it will all match).

The link will be up as long as you remain an active forum member. Plus the sig links in your messages will eventually count for something too (see the power of sig links). What do I mean by active? Maybe 10 quality posts a month (for a PR 4) and 15 (for a PR 5 link)? You might be looking at an hour or two a month. More would be OK with me. So would less if your posts are good enough.

Pharmanex herbal dietary supplements hasn't even been made widely available yet (still sorting out a few template issues), but when it launches I'd like people to see an informed (if small) group of people discussing healthy living. Please don't apply if you know nothing about any of my message board topics (but if you're an expert on another health related topic, I'll probably add a new board).

Get one way links

One way links are great. If you have a blog or a message board, here's a good way to get some:

1. Go to Digital Point's free coop advertising exchange network.

2. Download MTIncldePlus. Follow the simple installation instructions from Digital Point.

3. Digital Point gives you some code which you put on your site. Other ads will display on your site. Your ads will display on other people's sites.

You could use bannar ads, but of course I prefer text links...

The power of sig links

I can't link to it, or the experiment will be ruined but there's a site, http://www.memoriesbox.com, that has PR 6 from sig links and a few links from forum messages. A google search link:http://www.memoriesbox.com shows 813 backlinks from a handful of forums (I'm not crazy enough to count but seems like fewer than 10). Kind of makes you wonder. If there's a forum that prunes its messages or that doesn't pass out PR, why not look for a forum on the same topic that does?

Strange Page Rank

I received a request for a link ad today, so I went searching through my ESL blog to see if I had anything suitable. Most blog entries were PR 2 or 3 (which I expected), but I found two that were PR 6: Do blogs help? and Hurried Learning and one PR 5: Call Symposium

After checking backlinks and finding nothing special, I wonder what's going on here.

LinkRank

Linkworth.com is a site where you can buy and sell text links. I started fooling around with the Linkworth link popularity tool which counts the total number of backlinks different search engines show. I'm not really impressed. My Giants blog which has a few blogs linking to it shows link rank 3, while my ESL site which has hundreds of different sites linking to it shows link rank 2. In case you were wondering, ESL go has PR 6 while NFL Giants has PR 5. I think what it fails to take into account is that you need links from all over the web to impress the search engines. See links from different IPs for more information.

Getting started

Here's an interesting research study by Junghoo Cho and Sourashis Roy at UCLA, which found that popular sites get more link partners than new sites by virtue of their high search engine rankings. If a site is popular then everyone knows about it and it gets more link partners. If a site is unknown nobody knows to link to it.

A personal example (and yes using a personal example is a fallacy of thinking): remember the new site SEO I wrote about regarding my father's Collectible Car Show Photos? A search on Google or Yahoo for link:http://www.nashnut.com shows no results. Alltheweb shows two backlinks, both from pages on www.nashnut.com. Now it does have a few links; I got it into a few free directories and linked to it from this blog once before but you see the point - it isn't accumulating links because my father hasn't done any linkbuilding.

Now I haven't done any linkbuilding for my ESL site in the last few months. But I have hundreds of emails that I need to respond to one of these days about link exchanges. I get more every day. I am in the enviable position of getting way too many link exchange requests. I have finally set up a directory (which I wrote about yesterday) to make things more manageable. Now I reply to people and tell them to submit to the directory. For some reason most don't, probably because it's not showing PR yet.

Anyway, I digress. The point is that popular sites get lots of linkbuilding opportunities. New sites don't. That means that new sites will have to work pretty hard to attract link partners. It's also bad for the web. New sites might have good content but they still won't get links unless someone does a lot of work. And if they don't get links they won't do well in the search engines and no one will see this great content.

Although I should point out that even with just a handful of links nashnut.com is getting about 60 uniques a day, and some from Google and Yahoo for weird search terms like "1933 Auburn Car".

A few links

If you have a page that targets some not-too-competitive keywords, you probably only need a few links from external sites to see a big jump in search engine ranking.

A few weeks ago I did a search for "ESL blog" in Google. My ESL blog used to be number one, but had dropped to #9. That's pretty bad for an uncompetitive keyword phrase which is in the title of my blog (and thanks to Movable Type every page of my blog has ESL in the anchor text linking back to my main stie).

I got a few more links (only one more as far as I know), and now I'm #3. That's not #1, but it's much better considering how little work I did. It also pushed me up to PR 6 which is kind of cool (even if PR isn't all that important it helps selling text links). The new link was from my new language directory which is still PR 0 but already shows up in backlinks and search engine results!

How not to exchange links

Tip 1: Set your spam filters to allow emails with certain words like "reciprocal" and "exchange" in the subject. It sounds self-evident, but I've actually had emails with very specific subjects get bounced back to me.

Tip 2: Don't send nasty follow-up emails. I recently got one that went like this:

Thanks for ignoring my request to exchange links. Just letting you know your link has been removed. Cheers.

This woman wanted to exchange links with one of my PR 6 sites. Her site is PR 0. I don't need to deal with people like that. Plus I never did receive her first email. Maybe she sent it to the wrong address or maybe it got lost in cyberspace. Who knows? Maybe I deleted it by accident. These things do happen, so write nice follow-ups a week or so after sending the first link exchange request.

Tip 3: If you have to explain the value of alink exchange (and you probably don't), do it at the end of the email so the webmasters who know why they exchange links (virtually all of us) don't have to read that stuff again just to get to your link information.

Tip 4: Find the real email address. When I see an email for webmaster@.... it goes in the trash.

Tip 5: Supply the html. It won't take you long and it will save all the webmasters your asking to link to you some time.

Tip 6: Here's the best one. Look for non-traditional opportunities. See if you can get a link from a quality content page instead of a links page by offering a similar quality link in return. If the site seems to get good traffic, maybe exchaning index links would be good. Blogs and message boards can exchange every page links.

Unreliable PR 4 one way links

Wikipedia encyclopedia entries have an external links section after each entry. Generally there are only 2 or 3 external links and many of these are PR 4 pages. You can add your site(s) but anyone can remove them...

Where to find free one way links

It's not easy to find one way links without buying them. You've got your free ditrectories, but then what?

http://www.web-page-optimization.com/want-some.html is a page for webmasters who control multiple sites. Write in the URL of the site you want links to, the URL of the site you want to link from, and hope they get back to you. I'm still hoping...

Then there are a few forums offering links in exchange for posts, but I wonder how reliable these are. Once the forum deides they don't need you any more they can delete your link. I would imagune they'd want to once the forum got popular and those text link ads get more valuable. Anyway here are a couple: http://www.webmaster-talk.com/showthread.php?t=14690 and http://www.jimworld.com/apps/webmas...

Another ppossibiltiy is http://www.linksvirus.com/ but this one will require some trust and patience. The idea is that you link to link virus and 5 sites listed with them. Then you get added tot heir list and hopefully people add you to their list. Must be done from the homepage, so you're giving 6 links from your homepage, but who knows how many you'll get? I'll try it out and let you know.

How many links does it take?

After a scary drop out if the top ten, my stock market blog is up to #4 in Google for "stock market idea". No word yet on "stock market investment idea" or "stock market investment" which seem to be far more competitive terms. Nearly all of the links coming into my site are from blogs or message boards. The blogs are typically related somehow, but the message boards are generally webmaster boards (I've got the stock blog in my signature on these boards). I think it's pretty clear that these unrelated links are helping which means two things to me:

1. The people who say that links must come from relevant sites are a bit off. (I just finished deleting a bunch of gambling spam comments from this blog - would they be spamming me if it hurt them in the SERPs? Nah, they want unrelated links.)

2. I proabbly have to stay active on different message boards and find blogs to comment on... Not that I never spam a blog. I always think about the entry and only post if I have some thoughtful comment or question. Also, most of the incoming links are from blogs that put me in their sidebar (thus giving me links from virtually every page). There are many other links to so the PR must be pretty diluted, but PR isn't all that important anyway.

Can search engines determine a site's IP?

Not too long ago I wrote about links from different IPs. I recently asked my webhost about the possibility of getting different IPs and found there is none (unless I get a new host). Anyway, one person has been trying to convince me that there's no way a search engine can determine a site's IP (and therefore they could never determine if too many of your links come from the same IP). I know of two papers that discuss devaluing links from different IPs.

paper 1

paper 2

Again, there is no direct evidence that this is used, but there is circumstantial evidence. Google has been reported to ban sites that buy a ton of links from just one or two other sites.

Exchanging reviews & links

It started with a request for bloggers to exchange reviews of each others' blogs. Now there's a forum for people who want to participate. Here we go:

The bling blog is mostly about Amazon.com, SEO, and other related topics. There's more emphasis on page rank than I'd like to see, but overall this blog is worth a read.

Fast pagerank

I think I've had these sites up about a week: www.learn-english-grammar.com and www.learn-english-vocabulary.com Until 30 seconds ago I had only one link going to one of the sites (both sites link to each other from every page, but only the index page will be counted unitl I remove session IDs because these are phpbb message board sites). That link comes from the index page of a PR 6 site that has few outgoing links. The link has only been up three days.

According to my Google toolbar and this neat PR checker, I already have PR 3 for both sites. A search for link:http://www.english-grammar.com shows no results.

Page rank losing importance

I recently reported how drops in page rank didn't have an adverse affect on my search engine rankings. Here's a speculative article that discusses the declining importance of page rank.

Be careful about the obscure advice:

"If you really want online success in Google, think about customers and how to attract them, develop for them, cater to them, and find others who share that methodology (in plain english: more 'unique' content and different approaches to display that content and linkage that extends that content 'both ways') and Google will reward you. Shortcutting this -- Google consistently won't."

This basically says that unique content and linkage is good. I think everyone knows that, but we also know that unique content is not enough. One good thing about a ton of unique indexed content is that it gets you more anchor text. See cheap content.

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Free directories for SEO

A (http://www.seo-lab.com/directory-articles/best-free-directories.php - link disabled due to redirect: 10/13/04)nice list of directories that offer free submission and with links that search engines like. Now PR 4 links and higher are generally preferred, and by the time we get into the specific categories with many of these sites (Yahoo! and Dmoz! being notable exceptions) we're looking at PR 3 or even PR 2. But hey a one way link to your site is never bad, right?

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New page rank increase

Those of you who follow my SEO and link popularity quests on this blog may have noticed that SEO-search-engine-ranking.com recently went up to page rank 6 from page rank 5. So did www.esl-blog.com, www.travel-plan-idea.com, and www.stock-market-idea.com.

I'm not quite sure how these sites earned the increased page rank. Stock-market-idea.com picked up two external links from page rank 4 sites, one of them a blog entry. ESL-blog picked up a blog entry from a PR 5 site and another entry from a PR 4 site. Possibly these counted for quite a bit because they were one way links and blog entries. Considering the time and effort involved getting my first site, eslgo.com to PR 6, I was surprised to see it happen for these sites so quickly and with so (compared to the effort I put in to eslgo.com) little effort.

www.nfl-giants.com debuted at page rank 5. www.jtrotta.com debuted at page rank 4. ESL go.com remained page rank 6 and ESL go.net remained page rank 5. A Google search for links to these sites turns up no matches, although each site does have some links. Without knowing which links Google likes I can't tell how the page rank for each was derived.

One way and reciprocal links

Besides content, the biggest question relating to SEO is link partners. For example should I exchange links with different kinds of sites? The thematization question is atough one. Most large sites cover more than one theme: Is Yahoo going to be penalized for having sports and finance realted content? Is this site going ot be penalized for exchanging links with education sites?

Let's take the specific keyword ESL for example: English second language or Electronic sports league. With the current system, sites that are entirely different could potentially benefit from linking with each other. In the future, search engines may penalize links from unrelated sites. Many sites now have link categories that have nothing to do with their main key words.

Some people argue that one way links are counted more heavily than reciprocal links. This explains why buying links has become popular and why such high prices have been observed: 150-250 US/month for a link from a page rank 6 site. I ask for 110/year from my page rank 6 site and don't get it, perhaps because ESL is a "poor" keyword.

New site recently ranked by Google

So, with only link from an external site, Blogs for learning English/teaching English has debuted with a Google page rank of 5. The one link, of course, comes from my main ESL site, ESL go.com - free English as a second language which has a page rank 6.

You would think it was safe to say that a link from a PR 6 site guarantees PR 5 but when I started An English as a second language weblog, it debuted with PR 4 even when it had a link from the same PR 6 site, ESL go.com (plus one or two others). I wrote about that a while back.

Page rank debut

So this page recently was ranked by Google for the first time. My page rank is 5, thanks to a handfull of links, primarily ESL go, which has a page rank of 6. The other sites are my other three blogs, which shows you the importance of a few quality links. Here 4 external links = page rank 5 (the 4 links are PR 6, PR 5 x3 - each page has only 5 or so outgoing links). On ESL go, probably 100 external links = PR 6 and quite a few of the pages linking to ESL go are PR 5 and a few are even PR 6.

This also works against my time and link popularity theory which I wrote about in January. That ESL blog did increase to 5, but only as the links from this site and my other blogs were noticed by Google.

DMOZ directory not being updated

When I first submitted ESL go.com to DMOZ, I submitted it as a student resource. I've added over 250 pages since then including a good number of teacher resources. For the past few months I've been submitting changes to DMOZ; I want to be in the "English as a second language" category rather than the "student resources" sub category.

The main reason I care is that this might boost my link popularity; the sub category pages have lower page ranks. The other thing is that I want my sight to be listed appropriately. It's no longer strictly a student resource. However, DMOZ has been ignoring me for a while now.

Anyway, get your category right the first time when you submit to DMOZ (and I suppose this holds true for the Yahoo! directory as well) because you may never get a second chance.

Time and link popularity

My reciprocal links page for ESL go has 4 links (all from other eslgo.com pages). and a page rank of 5. The links:

www.eslgo.com - page rank 6 (5 external, many internal links)
www.eslgo.com/sitemap.html - page rank 5 (no external, many internal links)
www.eslgo.com/tlinks.html - page rank 5 (about 50 external and a few internal links)
www.eslgo.com/slinks.html - page rank 5 (about 50 external and a few internal links)

It used to have a page rank of 4 with the same exact links (none of which have changed rank or (substantially) the number of outbound links (which increased a little bit). It seems like the page rank increased over time.

My ESL blog has a rank of 4 with these 5 links:

www.eslgo.com/ - page rank 6
www.eslgo.com/tlinks.html - page rank 5
www.esl-blog.com/ - just itself
songsforteaching.homestead.com/ LinksESLBilingualMulticultural.html - page rank 4 (5 external links) - at one point this was the only page google recognized linking to my site. ESL blog had a rank of 1 at that time.
www.literacyconnections.com/ LinksESLMulticulturalBilingual.html - page rank 4 (6 external links)

I would have guessed that ESL blog would have a better rank (due to the external links). I wonder if (supposing the links stayed exactly the same), the page rank would increase after a month or so.