One of the secrets to building a reciprocal link network is by increasing the number of links pointing to your website. Incoming links to your website are important to search engines and are used to help determine your page rank. The more incoming links you have, then the higher your website is placed in Googles search results.



What most people do not know is that not all incoming links are given the same weight, and that the incoming, non reciprocal links are given more importance.

There are many ways to get inbound links to your site without having to give out reciprocal links or put out alot of cash. Here are just a few ideas.

* Good website content. You must make sure that your website is full of useful, informative content. When you have a lot of relevant content other website owners will want to link to your website because it will be a great resource to them and their visitors. Some examples of good content are ebooks, a newsletter, tools and software, free articles, tips that are related to your website, and a blog that is updated daily with new material.

Search engines and directories try to locate the websites that offer something valuable and unique to the Internet. People actually link to sites simply because they find the content useful.

* Testimonials. If you happen to find an interesting, informative website then send a testimonial to the website owner. They may give you a link to your website if they post your testimonial on their website. These links all add up and are important for search engine ranking.

* Online Directories. There are many online directories that you can submit your website to. This helps with getting inbound links to your site. Some of the directories require you to pay or provide a reciprocal link. But, there are many online directories that will accept your submission for free and with no reciprocal link.

Just do some research to determine which ones are free, or if you have the extra cash, go ahead and pay up (or you can send some my way).

* Content Articles. One of the best ways to get inbound links to your website is through article marketing. Interesting, informative, professionally written articles with the appropriate content can provide you with targeted traffic and high quality permanent links to your web site.

It is very important that your articles contain your targeted keywords and that they read well!

You can submit articles to websites, ezines, and article directories. An easy way to get your article published is to go to Google or Yahoo groups and do a search for "Internet Articles Publishing". Get involved with some of the groups, this will allow you to find websites that are looking for articles.

Do not forget to put information about yourself, with a link to your website in the resource box of the article, as this will open up the potential for many inbound links to your website. Articles can be the most time consuming of link building tasks when you take into consideration the time it takes to write and submit the article. A helpful tip is to make sure you add the locations of the article submission sites to a folder in your "Favorites". This will save time when you go to submit new articles.

* Free Ebook. Alot of people think that ebooks are hard to write and could take a long time to put together, but you can actually create one in no time. You can make it a collection of your favorite tools, resources and articles that are related to your website. As long as the ebook is considered useful by your visitors then they may link to your website for a copy or agree to offer your ebook on their website. Make sure you include links to your website in the ebook.

* Blogs. Combining a link building campaign with blogs will give you alot of exposure for your business or program. Blogs are another tool that many entrepreneurs are using to produce great results. Because Blogs are updated with content on a regular basis they tend to rank higher then normal websites.

What most people do not realize is that Blogs are free and take just a few minutes to set up!

The easiest way to get inbound links with blogs is to simply host one on your website and update it frequently. Blogs are linked to more often because the content is being constantly updated. You will also get more inbound links with blogs when you submit it to blog directories. Do a search on Google for "free blog directory" and you will find many directories that you can submit to for free.

* Host a free article directory. Why not create an article directory on your website and have visitors submit articles to it? You can then request a link back to your website in exchange for the article submission. This will improve your inbound links while also creating free content for your website.

* Get listed in the major directories. Yahoo and the Open Directory Project are two of the most important directories at present. The Open Directory Project is free but it can be difficult to get a listing approved because they only list sites with original content that do not have alot of affiliate links. Inclusion in the Open Directory Project and Yahoo is well worth the effort and will be very helpful in boosting the standing for your site in search engine results.

There are also many smaller directories that are set up for particular areas of interest. Getting listed in them will take some time, but persistence will pay off, not only in your search engine page ranking but in bringing targeted traffic to your website. A few visitors to your website that are interested in what you have to offer are more valuable then many uninterested visitors.

It is also important to make sure that any sites you link to are related to your topic. You can use search engines to find related sites, and by linking to sites that have a high page ranking in the search engines you will provide your site with more exposure.

Remember that non reciprocal links are more important for search engine ranking because they are not reciprocated (search engines can actually detect whether links are reciprocal) and they do not have to be monitored as reciprocal links.

Here is one last tip, do a search on the keywords that you want to improve your search engine ranking for. From these results use the domains of the sites that rank above your own, and go to Yahoo and enter, linkdomain:www. site that rank above yours. com. Contact the web sites that resulted from the linkdomain search and ask them to link to your site. Do this for each of the linkdomain searches.

The ideas above offer the most consistently over time and even though they may seem time consuming, are well worth the effort.

I wish you success in building your inbound link network, and even though it will take time and effort, done right, the rewards will be worth it!

Joe Rispoli

Copyright 2006 by Joe Rispoli