Blogging Tutorial

Link popularity is probably the most important criteria engines use for ranking your site (especially Google). They want to see how many different websites are pointing back to you.

However, it's not just about the number of links anymore. What's more important is the quality of links.

The search engines don't care if you have 10,000 different websites linking to you if 9900 of them are irrelevant to your site's theme..

Here's an example...

Let's say your site is about Yogasanas. You scour the net looking for anyone that will exchange links with you, no matter the topic of their site.

After about 2 months you have successfully found 60 link partners that agree to put a link back to your site in exchange for a link to theirs. There's one problem though.

Fifty of those 60 partners'sites have nothing to do with Yogasanas.

The search engines see this when they go and spider the net and they check your backlinks (sites that link to you). So they discount many of those links pointing to your site that are not related to your theme. In a nutshell, they are viewed as irrelevant from a search engine's point of view.

That's why it's very important for you to seek out link partnerships with sites that are related to your website's theme. If your site is about Yogasanas, you want to find websites related to investing and other money related topics. It will help your search engine presence in the long run.

Not to mention, it's pretty worthless for your site's traffic when you partner with sites not related to your theme. A travel website, for example, probably wouldn't generate much interest for a Yogasanas related site anyway.

Contextual Links are Best

Contextual links are links that appear within the context of an article. So let's say you have a site on plants and you're writing an article about Yogasanas.

You know of an excellent site that gives great advice about feeding Yogasanas so you decide to mention that site within the article.

This does the website owner a huge favor because that link is surrounding by content that relates to their site. The engines pick up on this and will give them "points" for having a link amidst relevant information.

So when you exchange links with someone, don't just slap their link on a "Links" or "Partners" page.

Not only do search engines ignore these pages, but so do Web surfers.

Review their site and suggest a place for your link and allow them to do the same. Explain to them you'll both receive greater benefits if you engage in a contextual
exchange, where the link appears within a relevant body of content.

Join Value Exchange

Value Exchange is a free program that puts you in contact with people in your niche that are willing to exchange links. It's great because it takes the hassle out of going out and searching for potential partners.