How to tell good from bad links? Additional Linking strategies...
Which Link Building Plan will be best for me?
Given the important role inbound links play in marketing and promoting a web site, you are confronted with a myriad of options and tools designed to help you find and maintain those links.
Both types of plans are helpful in your efforts of getting better positioned by search engines. Depending on your budget you can choose either plan. The only difference between these two link building approaches is that reciprocal links are not as higly regarded by search engines as one way links, hence you need more of them to arrive at the same result as you would with one way links. However, reciprocal links are usually easier to get in less time, which makes up for their shortcoming in terms of popularity. When using link services, the direct-reciprocal link exchange option tends to be less cost intensive than the one-way, non-reciprocal variant.
Yes, the one-way linking method is looked upon more favourably by search engines than the other one, but because of that can be more cost and/or time intensive as well.
If you are still not sure and can't decide, why not try both variants and see which one works best for you? Maybe you find that, if used together, the two methods complement each other and get you even better results. Who is to say you can't have the best of both worlds!
How to tell "good" links from the "bad" ones?
Linking to "bad neighborhoods" is a big NO and should be avoided at all costs. Web sites that have been penalized by search engines because they have spammy link pages, are considered a link farm or deploy dubious black-hat techniques are all "bad neighborhoods" for you. Linking to those pages can earn you penalties for your site too.
It's not always that easy to spot such a bad neighborhood and if you are in doubt it's best to leave this site until you have gathered enough information to make an informed decision.
Why are Link Farms bad?Being associated with Link Farms can result in your site being banned from important search engines such as Google and Yahoo. Why are link farms so bad for you? There is no authority or control mechanism, so people can add whatever URL they want to those pages for free. You probably don't want a link to your site that appears on the same page as links to adult membership sites and all those spam sites most of you find in your spam mail folder almost every day. These pages tend to be full of hundreds of keyword stuffed links without much accompanying text and there seems to be no method to the way they are arranged, such as a general theme or market area.
How to avoid "Bad Neighborhoods"?
It can be difficult to detect or identify a bad neighbourhood. Even if you think a web site is trustworthy it may turn out to be the opposite. Already-penalized websites and sites deploying black-hat SEO techniques are not easy to spot. It's not all that bad, though. Google won't penalize you for a few mistakes and is pretty forgiving, but why not avoid those mistake as much as you can right from the beginning and keep a clean record or should I say "white hat" ;o)
non-reciprocal link building
A good way to avoid unintentionally linking to bad neighborhood sites would be a non-reciprocal link building campaign, where you only get inbound links without having to link back to the source. Search engines go by a premise that if "bad" sites link to yours it's not your fault, as it defies your control who links to you and who doesn't. Unless you link back to them your site won't get penalized, even if several bad sites linked to you. One-way link building campaigns are very safe for this reason, since your site does not lose reputation even if the incoming link turns out to be "bad".
reciprocal link building - use reputable services specialized in finding quality sites
As trading links with other web sites is a very convenient and widely used tecnique to increase traffic it would be a shame to just not use it out of fear to be associated with "bad" sites. Especially when you are just starting out it is much easier and more effective to convince somebody to link to your site by offering to link back to them as opposed to just waiting for someone to find your site eventually and link to it.
You can gather a considerable amount of good links in less time than you would with one-way link building. This makes up for the extra links you need, compared to the inbound-only links method, to get the same results. The outcome may be in no way inferior to non-reciprocal link building. In fact, if you get enough relevant sources from enough web sites they might actually outweigh the importance that has been assigned to a few one way links pointing at your web site.
Unless you have the time and are really sure about a site's reputation it's recommended to let companies that are experts in their field help you. Linking to another web site via direct link exchange exposes you to the possibility of your page unknowingly linking to bad neighborhoods and therefore should be carefully evaluated. Automated link exchange software can make things easier for webmasters on the hunt for good link exchanges.
Arelis, by Axandra is one of the best known programs and an excellent tool for this purpose. The people behind this program have been in business for more than 10 years and can offer a lot more than that. Leave it up to them to do all the tedious work and get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and all other major search engines, otherwise you will get your money back!
How Arelis worksYou enter your URL and keywords that you feel are most relevant and best describe your web site. Click the "Find new link partners" button and the software will suggest relevant and similar websites to you. The program will also list sites that link to your competitors, so you can investigate the possibility of doing exchanges with them as well.
Arelis is FREE to download on a trial basis, so you can try it out and see if the program is one that works for you. Click here to learn more and download your free trial copy.
Link building additional ways
Get Links Through Directory Submission
A Way to get quality inbound links and direct traffic
Directory submission is a very effective and yet affordable solution to get additional direct traffic as well as perfectly relevant one-way links to your site. Getting listed in a category related to your web site not only gives you well targeted traffic, but also will have a positive effect on your PageRank and your position in the search engine results page (SERPs).
Other ways: Links via articles and blogs, Forum Participation, E-mail signatures, Add Testimonials, Press Release (see more on next page)Summary - Last Words
We have shown you the most popular ways of building links. Now it's up to you to make the most of this information. There is no such thing as THE best way to generate links, as they all have their advantages. It all depends on what your goals are, how quickly you want to achieve them and of course on your budget. In our opinion a good way to go about getting your links is to employ different strategies and see which one works best for you. Then spend most of your efforts on the strategy that worked best for you without loosing sight of the other ones, though. They still are valuable resources too and should not be overlooked if you want to maximize your success.
One-Way Links
